BOOKS OF THE DAY
Truth About the Press
British Newspapers and Their Controllers. By Viscount Camrose. t Cassell. 8s. 6d.) IF he had chosen to lapse into current jargon Lord Camrose might have entitled his valuable and most instructive volume " Press Barons, by One of Them." His own journalistic association with other Press Barons has been with his brother Lord Kemsley, his late brother Lord Buckland and Lord Iliffe, but with none of them has he today any connection so far as daily papers are concerned. His career (which began on the Merthyr Times at the age of fourteen) is evidence of the fact that, contrary to general belief, the tendency in the newspaper world of late years has been away from what is mis- called monopoly rather than towards it. Lord Camrose was at one time whole or part owner of the Sunday Times and the Financial Times ; now he concerns himself with the Daily Telegraph only. In the same way there is now a complete severance between the once interlocked Daily Mirror and the Daily Mail. On all this Lord Camrose's book provides pertinent and important information ; all of it, let it be noted by persons eager to discover a web of secret intrigue in the Press world somewhere, is diligently gathered from sources open to anyone's investigation, though Lord Camrose often adds interesting personal touches out of his own long experience. The gravamen of the charges, often groundless or exaggerated, of what are termed " monopolistic tendencies " in the newspaper and periodical Press concerns the national newspapers published in London very little. No one can call the association of a daily, an evening and a Sunday paper (e.g. the Daily Express, Evening Standard and Sunday Express) monopolistic, but there are two London papers, the Daily Mail and the Sunday Times, which have a " chain " of provincial papers closely connected with them financially. The two other provincial groups, United Newspapers with four evening papers and the Westminster Press with four morning, nine evening and one Sunday, have no foothold in London. Since the Kemsley Press is the usual target of attack, and Lord Camrose has had close personal association with it in the past, the particulars here given provide valuable material for study. In 1924 Lord Rothermere, who had bought the Daily Dispatch group of newspapers from Sir Edward Hulton, sold the bulk of them to Lord Camrose, who formed Allied Newspapers Ltd., in conjunction with Lord Kemsley and Lord Iliffe, to .own the new acquisition ; in due course a number of other pro- vincials came under the same ownership. In regard to that Lord Camrose makes two interesting observations. The first is that "all these papers were offered for sale to us by their then proprietors "- meaning presumably that Allied Newspapers was not throwing out a net, but simply taking what came to it ; in view of the steadily mounting cost of running a provincial paper with a necessarily limited circulation, it is natural enough that many owners should wish to sell to a " chain " which, by sharing many services (such as foreign correspondence), could run each paper much more economically. That something endowed with so much personality as a newspaper
should be treated as an article of commerce is this way is frankly regrettable, but no practical alternative presents itself and it will be surprising if the Royal Commission can devise one.
Lord Camrose's other observation is " it is perhaps needless to say that the politics of each of the papers acquired remained as before." Some further explanation seems called for here. The natural impli- cation seems to be that the papers acquired by Allied Newspapers were of different political colours, though I fancy they were nearly all Conservative. But this raises an important issue. There may be little objection to a proprietor of definite Conservative convictions owning papers in different parts of the country to disseminate Con- servative views (as the Westminster Press group, ,under Liberal control, disseminates Liberal views). But to run newspapers simply as business concerns regardless of what line is taken in the editorial columnsis a definite degradation ; an organ of opinion is one thing, a business enterprise another ; the two stand on different levels. Lord Camrose and Lord Iliffe, it may be noted in passing, some years ago dissociated themselves from Allied Newspapers, which subse- quently changed its name to Kemsley Newspapers. As a result of the amalgamations or acquisitions of recent years (in some cases there were local amalgamations from economic causes and subsequent acquisition by a group for the same reason) provincial morning papers in England and Wales have since 1910 dropped from fifty to nineteen. It does not follow that the process will continue ; the weakest have succumbed, but the survivors may still survive. 'And sometimes, as in the case of the Bristol Evening Post, there is a heartening tale to tell. The story of how in Bristol an Allied Newspaper evening paper merged with a Rothermere invader, thereby creating so much local resentment that a new paper, the Evening Post, was floated under local patronage, and not only established itself but eventually secured control of its rival—that story is well worth the space Lord Camrose gives it. So, incidentally, are the facts about the Daily Mirror.
British Newspapers and Their Controllers will obviously become the recognised authority for the field it covers (less wide than the P.E.P. report of 1938). I think its author rather over-estimates the circulation of some newspapers and periodicals which do not publish their figures, and he seems to me to underrate the value .of trusts which prevent a paper being bought and switched suddenly on to a different political line (as used to happen periodically to the Pall Mall Gazette). And he makes one not unimportant slip. It is not the Labour Party which holds a 49 per cent. interest in the Daily Herald and controls its policy, but the Trades Union Congress. It is curious that this function should be exercised by Labour's indus- trial, not its political, organisation. WILSON HARRIS.
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