NEWSPAPER INDEPENDENCE.
[TO THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."] SIR,—Will you allow me, as a journalist of nearly twenty years' ex- perience in the doubtful joys of leader-writing, to place before you a question of journalistic casuistry which has lately been troubling me more than I should have thought possible a few years ago ? The age of literary bravos has, I believe, passed away. The men who were not ashamed to sell themselves to anybody who hired them to write on any side on any question are almost an extinct race, but I fear there is some danger of our falling under the influence of another race of journalists, who although they would scorn the sins and follies of the old Grub- Street hacks, are, nevertheless, guilty of a very mischievous practice of their own. They won't absolutely give the lie to their own convictions, but they are willing to bend and colour the expression of those convictions, in such a fashion as to make their readers think very differently from themselves, upon the subjects on which they write. The other day, for example, I was in the company of some men justly honoured both by their fellow- journalists and by the outside world, when the conversation turned upon Mr. Gladstone and his capacity as a statesman. Not a man in the company failed to express the conviction that Mr. Gladstone was incomparably the greatest statesman of our day, and yet I happened to know that some of those who were most enthusiastic in lauding him to the skies were engaged day after day, or week after week (this was before his resignation of the leadership) in depreciating his great qualities, and giving the rather stupid mass of "general readers" to understand that political parties in general, and the Liberals in particular, would gain rather than lose by his withdrawal from public life. They did not write in this way because they were paid to do so. Nobody would have resented an attempt to corrupt his pen more quickly and angrily than any one of these gentlemen would have done, but they were under the influence of a certain clique or coterie ; and although, being shrewd and intelligent observers of passing events, they knew that the opinions entertained in these cliques and coteries were, to say the least, ridiculously exaggerated, they found it pleasant to themselves to colour their remarks about Mr. Gladstone with the hue most favoured by those under whose social influence they happened to be, and thus gave the world an essentially false impression of their real estimate of that states- man's character.
The same thing happened more recently when Mr. Forster was being discussed in the Press. Men who, as I knew, had the highest admiration for the Member for Bradford, preferred to give expression to the opinions of Whigs like Sir William Harcourt and Mr. Lowe, or of Nonconformist-Ultramontanes like Mr. Dale, rather than to their own honest individual convictions. Here and there a newspaper editor had the "courage of his opinions," and you have only to observe how the Daily News was denounced by the united forces of Birmingham and Crewe, in order to see what the penalty of that courage was. I happen to know of another case in which, because a Liberal journal of a certain standing held the same view as the Daily News on this. question, its proprietors were threatened with the establishment of a rival journal ! Those who have the largest acquaintance with newspaper proprietors of the ordinary type will know best how readily they are moved by such threats. In this particular- case, it is true, the proprietors were proof against the bullying of their Nonconformist readers ; but I am sorry to say that was because they happened to be very unlike most newspaper pro- prietors, and not because the bullying was not meant in downright earnest. I mention this circumstance merely to show that the- temptation to write with a view to please a political or social party, rather than to express the independent convictions of a well-informed mind, is by no means a slight one; and though I regret that so many journalists succumb to that temptation, I cannot pretend to be surprised by the circumstance. But what are we coming to, if this state of things is to be carried much farther? Members of Parliament are sinking to the level of mere delegates, who know that if they venture to rise above the level of the constituencies they represent, they do so at the risk of losing their seats ; even party leaders, it would seem,. are henceforth to occupy this ignoble position, and the candid expression of independent thought on the questions- of the day will be left to those writers in the Press who are happily free from the painful necessity of rendering once a year "an account of their stewardship "to a mob of Mr. Disraeli's householders. If our journalists also, however, choose to abandon their own independence, and become the mere mouthpieces of sects and cliques, an evil time is undoubtedly in store for us. We shall have been launched with a vengeance upon that " barren plain of democracy" about which Mr. Lowe waxed so eloquent in 1866. I don't purpose to intrude further upon your space, but I should be glad if you, or somebody with as good a right to discuss the question as you undoubtedly have, would take up this subject, and admonish weak-kneed leader-writers with respect to the great trust which has been committed to them, and the duty they owe to their profession and their country.—I am,
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