Page:The Social Value of a Code of Ethics for Journalists.pdf/2

Rh can press is with these editors more than it is with those critics; that the critical picture is overdrawn and lacks perspective and proportion.

The most virulent critics of the press as it exists do not deny the presence in the working personnel of the profession of a tremendous element of good will, character, technical knowledge, and aspiration for social improvement. The most satisfied of the newspaper's defenders—and there are many who point with pride to the contrast its present condition makes with its often erring past—cannot overlook the imperfections of the present and the need for vigilant care lest progress slacken and retrogression or decay set in. He would be an incurable optimist or a careless observer who would say that the morale of the press has not received grave wounds in the period of the War and Armistice. Yet even since 1914 certain constructive changes have been initiated within the body of the profession itself that may ultimately far outweigh in effect the degenerative influences of the orgy of hatred, narrowness and propaganda. Some of these will be specified later.

The modern press, as we know it, is less than a hundred years old. Three generations, in this country at least, have witnessed nearly the whole of the evolution of the journalist, the man who regards the gathering, presentation and interpretation of the news of the world as a science and an art, and its practice as a profession. Before, say, 1830 we have in journalism only the psychology of the pamphleteer and the politician applied through one of the collateral activities of the job printer. Even today a careless apprentice system furnishes nearly all the training for what must become, in any really well-ordered system of society, one of the most learned and scrupulous of the higher professions.

The problems of journalism can never be disconnected from the dilemmas that confront society as a whole and every newspaper office decision arises in some way from and has a reactive effect upon economic and social forces that play upon the community at large. In a perfect society good journalism would be easy. Yet he who proposes to reform society as a necessary precedent to developing a better journalism is lost to all sense of proportion; the very function of good journalism is to work toward a better society; the newspaper is to be justified as an instrument and not as an end. To wait for society to demand better newspapers is to wait too long; besides, there are more signs of hope within the profession itself than are yet to be observed in the effective demand of newspaper patrons, subscribers and advertisers—society.

The newspaper publishers of today are men of varied origins and training. Many began their careers as printers; others inherited or invested in newspaper properties. The advertising solicitor, the circulation man, the newsboy, the office boy, the printer's devil, have developed into controllers of policy as frequently as the man who served his apprenticeship, such as it was, in the gathering and writing of news. An acute business judgment is a more uniform characteristic than any familiarity with the social effects of journalistic policies. Yet it is this personnel that is the strongest force behind the effort to raise journalism to a position as one of the learned and scrupulous professions. It is these men who are the backers of the new schools of journalism and it is they who encourage the teachers of journalism to criticise freely, to set up such ideals as they are capable of conceiving and