The Nonpartisan Leader Newspaper, May 13, 1918, Page 5

The Confession of a Reporter Conscience Will Not Allow an Honest Man to Be a Newspaper Worker—A Peep Into Some of the Tricks of the Profession BY PAUL GREER % JF YOU had swallowed your be- liefs,” my father frequently tells me, “you could have been one of the big men on the Daily Blade.” Almost 10 years ago, when I was fresh from college, he led me into the cubbyhole of the publisher and proudly in- : troduced me as the holder of a diploma from the University of Michigan. Father, who had starved his way through a prairie normal ‘school, always embarrassed me by telling strangers about my college degree, which after all didn’t amount to as much as if I had earned it. I managed to ask for a job and the three of us groped through a dingy passage. Reaching a room filled with the clatter of typewriters and telegraph instruments, I was introduced to the city editor as a new reporter. The next day I started in at $15 a week. % X The first six months of a reporter’s life is pure bliss. It is a new world® and he is busy—too busy to grow discontented, too busy to hear office gossip. Journalism is not the onmly activity in which the old hands lie back and let the cubs do the work. HOW ADVERTISING : IS A BRIBE Some things will puzzle the beginner. After turning up a story of the elopement of the son of a wealthy clothing merchant with the old man’s press, unless it is in the country towns. daily bread. be toasting an ‘Independent Press.’ we dance. cashier, he finds that it does not appear in the paper. A good yarn, too. The merchant threatens to disown the boy, but finally kidnaps him from the bride and induces him to enlist in the navy. The girl gets another job and waits for her husband to return. ! - On the other hand, he gets orders to play up the account of the mental collapse of another ‘merchant. After this millionaire had announced a general in- crease of pay for his $6-a-week shop girls, he was taken to a sanitarium by his children. From that retreat he telephoned the manager of his store and ordered him to buy a gross of canary birds and give one away with each purchase. One of these shops does not advertise. The one that did enjoyed. immunity from unfavorable pub- licity. 1t is by such hints as these, unspoken, dimly sug- gested, that the reporter adjusts his point of view. He learns after interviewing a returned senator who appealed to his imagination as an important " figure in national affairs that the whole office is rocking with laughter at his expense. - That news- paper will not print anything about the senator except a knock. e i ; Countless little pinpricks of such sort may make a sore conscience that will take a man from news- paper work into a business that, although it prob- ably is no more honestly conducted, does not have such widespread influence for evil. More probably, within a year the cub reporter will be making $20 or $256 a week, and will salve' his conscience with R SRR S . John Swinton, one of America’s oldest and most beloved Jjournalists, was tendered a banquet by his fellow editors, and surprised his hosts by the following words: “There is no such thing in America as an independent “You know it and I know it. There is not one of you who dares to write his honest opinions, and if you did you know beforehand that it would never appear in print. “I am paid $150 a week for keeping my honest opinions out of the paper I am connected with—others of you are paid similar salaries for similar things—and any of you who would be so foolish as to write his honest opinions would be out on the streets looking for another job. “The business of the New York journalist is to destroy the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to vilify, to. fawn at the feet of Mammon, and to sell his race and his country: for his “You know this and I know it, and what folly is this to “We are the tools and vassals of rich men behind the scenes. We are the jumping-jacks; they pull the strings and Our talents, our possibilities and our lives are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes.” the thought that his friends, who are civil engi- neers, salesmen and railroad clerks, are not prog- ressing as fast. LONG DISTANCE PROGRESSIVES As time goes on he will become completely rec- onciled to newspaper ethics. His only, comment on the dishonesty of the policy will be humorous. In cleaning out my locker today I found a brief commentary on conditions in our office, written by a reporter who left to run an Oklahoma farm on shares with his father. He had written it thus: “WHAT THE DAILY BLADE STANDS FOR “Democracy—in Russia. “Free speech—in Germany. “State insurance—in England. “Minimum wage laws—in Oregon. “Government ownership—in New Zealand. “High wages—for those employed by its ene- mies.” But he was a practicing opponent of prohibition, and I think what galled him most was our editor’s advocacy of that cause. “I wish the wet and dry question was' settled permanently,” he used to say. “If the dailies and weeklies could dispose of the matter now, they might be forced to discuss something more vital.” He regarded the agitation for the abolition of liquor as camouflage, diverting public attention from the ending of deeper wrongs. It is in such a school that the reporter is edu- cated. He learns the hollowness of public men, because he has talked with them, and he con- cludes that half of them are illiterate and the other half intoxicated. Assign a reporter to in- terview a statesman and he will seek him at the hotel bar. The task of writing the interview with a political leader calls for only a little imagination and a knowl- edge of what the public or the editor expects him to say. Frequently the report- er has telephoned the local pillars of society and asked if he may quote them on some problem of government or industry. “Certainly, whatever you think I should say. T'll stand for it,” will be the sum of the telephonic reply. Reputations for great wisdom and public spirit have been built up in this way. A reporter is assigned to call on the bankers every day, on the financial run. He is invited to put his feet on their desks, smoke their cigars, and even to make a loan. If the bankers get a reporter or an editor in their clutches, it is time for the people to beware of the news as it is printed. NO USE FOR THE MAN WHO WORKS Even in the highest society the reporter is re- ceived as an equal. His is a white collar job, and he adopts the Cluett-Peabody attitude of consider- ing old clothes a disgrace, labor a shameful thing, the poor man a criminal. He is a $30-a-week capitalist. That is why I am quitting the newspaper game. The trouble with the press is the men who feed its columns. Without moral backbone, without ideals, without a sense of justice or fair play, they are poisoning the minds of such people as put any trust in the daily newspapers. In the minds of others they are irrigating the seeds of distrust that-make each man suspect his neighbor. Without conscious effort they: teach that the struggle for existence is with our fellow men, rather than with evil indug!:rial conditions. “ Living in a false atmosphere is in part responsi- ble for this reactionary attitude. Many a news- paper worker has dined with President Roosevelt _at the chamber of commerce or traveled on a spe- cial train with Presi- dent Taft. Then he has gone home to worry about how he is to pay the grocery bill. In many cases, I sus- pect, the owners of our larger newspapers (where they are _private citizens.and not of- ficeholders or corpora-- tions) are innocent of much that goes on in their editorial rooms. In our own office men are held back by tradition. They fear to write the un- decorated truth - be- cause they think it would be un- acceptable to _, the editors. ¢+ Some men- tally dodder- ~ ing telegraph editor will say to his assistant: “I have always understood that we don’t print much about strikes. It tends to stir up labor.” So he throws into the waste basket the dispatches telling of the war for bread in the woolen milling towns of New England. If he had a bit of spirit, he would execute his trust to the people and see that they got the news. THE NEED FOR HONEST REPORTERS While working on the desk I have tried sending radical news through the printers and know that it gets by without comment from my superiors. The typesetters, who are g~ .d union men, usually con- trive to give it a prominent position, too. The American newspaper press would be forced to become forward looking tomorrow if the report- ers could be given a progressive point of view. Whether this realization that they belong to the working class is obtained by study of sociology and economics or by association with men who labor with their hands does not matter in the least. We may yet see a reporters’ union that will call a strike when an honestly written story is distorted by a crooked editor. If the reporters are more reactionary than their employers, the people are more progressive than the editor who strives to divert their thoughts. The success of the muckraking magazines 10 or 15 years ago encouraged the habit of free thought. Newspapers with a radical outlook came to be in demand. They started out sensational, feebly capi- talized, very irresponsible. They succeeded—too well. The editors now have become fat and pros- perous. Neither they nor their papers are any longer progressive. But the people, thus started thinking along radi- cal lines, have not Become prosperous, and they con- tinue with their criticism of things as they are; “even after the editors, who started the ball rolling, have stopped short. The letter of resignation of the editor of the cleanest New York newspaper contains a significant paragraph: “I leave the active service of the Evening Post with a reluctance and a regret which it would be impossible for me to exaggerate. To my colleagues in the newspaper profession it is unnecessary to dwell upon the fact that the New York Evening Post stands perhaps first in the very small list of daily papers, service upon which is a certificate of freedom of conscience and expression, personal self respect, and highest professional standards.” As I turn this story into its envelope for mailing, I take my hat and then feel inside my vest pocket to make sure I still have my week’s pay. There isn’t much more than that between me and the ever present high cost of living. But, like some woman whose feet have strayed to shaieless paths—on whose ears yet falls the still small voice—I am turning back to the haonest life. I am quitting the newspaper game. S R O DR