One hundred years ago
THE RESPONSIBILITY OF JOURNALISTS
NOTHING is so clear to the minds of Englishmen and Americans as that a censorship of the Press must be the very worst method in which the Press can be controlled. It kills all the use of journals as purveyors of news, destroys the inde- pendence of all journalists, and, in prac- tice, works most oppressively against those who are desirous of making of their function a kind of priesthood. It is what they say, not what the gossips and the jobbers of journalism say, that the censors fear. Thought is emasculated, argument is made weak, and every aber- ration is made important; for let the journalist talk what nonsense he will, "the passage, it must not be forgotten, has passed the official censor." It is a curious fact, too, that a sensible censor is hardly procurable by any Govern- ment. One would think it easy enough to find such a man, for one is found in every country of Europe, to control the stage; but there is some inexplicable dif- ficulty in the way. We suppose the work itself begets prejudice, or breeds in the censor the defect of magnifying vision which is supposed to belong to oxen; for it is a fact that he almost invariably becomes a fool, prohibits the wrong journals, stamps out the innocent arti- cles, and is completely baffled by dou- bles entendres which every man in the street who reads them easily under- stands.
The Spectator 24 November 1894
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