THE HONOUR OF A JOURNALIST.
IT never seemed very probable that Lord Alverstone actually meant what he was reported to have said on the subject of journalism in the course of the hearing of a recent case in the King's Bench Division. What be was reported to have said was that "journalists were not actuated by the same code of honour as other people." On Saturday last the London District of the Institute of Journalists passed a resolution drawing Lord Alverstone's attention to the matter, and expressing a hope that the statement attributed to him did not accurately convey his meaning ; and as was to be expected, Lord Alverstone on Tuesday "most absolutely and unreservedly withdrew" any expression of his which was capable of being construed to mean anything of the kind. "He was quite convinced that journalists did feel themselves bound by, and did act on, the same dictates of honour as other honourable men. In particular cases the conduct of journalists was to be criticised." But "if he had said anything, or was supposed to have said anything, contrary to the view he was then expressing, it was an entire mistake. No such idea ever entered into his mind." And so the incident ended, in the only way in which it was ever likely to end. Whatever Lord Alverstone actually did say in the first instance—and he probably meant to say something which all journalists who are proud of their profession have said to themselves before now—it would have been the Lord Chief Justice just as much as the Press who would have been mis- represented if the expression attributed to Lord Alverstone had not been publicly repudiated.
The interesting point to consider is the reception which the publication of such a statement met with, before it was dis- owned, among readers of newspapers. Did it strike the average reader as a gross libel on an honourable profession, or merely as rather too sweeping a comment to be made by a public man, or, possibly, as a very fairly epigrammatic way of putting into words what the reader himself thought ? Nobody can doubt that thinking men must have taken the first of these views, for if you once grant that a nation somehow does get the Press it deserves, to remark that journalists are habitually dishonest is simply to state that the readers of journals are themselves also dishonest,—else how could the papers survive ? To survive, they must be bought, and nobody goes on buying papers of which he disapproves. But among those who have not thought out the question of what a newspaper means and is and does, and who have not taken pains to find out whether there may not be, after all, a standard of morality and clean conduct guiding the work of those who are responsible for the direction of news- papers, there is, no doubt, just the same desire to kick balloons as you can hear any day in the conversation of a dinner-table when talk turns on the War Office, or the Post Office, or one of the railways running south from London. There seems to be an intangible something, an impalpable entity, which it does its critics good to punch. That strange, inimical, thwarting creature usually described as " they " sets itself up every morning when the bookstalls open as a sort of Aunt Sally for everybody with a light heart to throw sticks at. "They" say, perhaps, that a substance called radium has been discovered which actually has the property of disseminating heat without conforming to the laws of heat as hitherto formulated and known,—" but then you can't trust what these fellows say, can you ? They've got their living to make, poor beggars, just the same as me and you. They've got to publish something, I suppose, or they couldn't sell their blessed papers." There is nothing very profound or dignified in all that ; but who has not heard it twice a day in the train? But if the journalist who happens to overhear intellectual comment of this kind is occasionally puzzled in trying to think what the entity described as " they " means to readers of newspapers, the creature known as " it " is even more evasive. "I see it says that they hate us," was the luminous observation of one who, to use his own expression, had just "waded through" a leading article in an evening newspaper. What did, and what do—for they are still used every day—those pronouns mean to those who use them No doubt the obiter dictum wrongly ascribed to Lord Alverstone—how many persons reflect that another kind of Press might possibly have refused to publish such a remark, if it was ever made ?—was dismissed as an inadvertency on the part of the Judge, or as a mistake on the part of the reporter, by thinking persons. Probably the present writer was unfor- tunate in his choice of a railway carriage on the morning on which Lord Alverstone's misreported remark was published. But possibly in other railway carriages there was heard some such comment as: " Well, really it is satisfactory to find a Judge in Court saying that. Mind you, it's what I've been saying for years." If the conversation thus begun ended with the con- vinced declaration that the entire staff of this or that news- paper—or possibly all the staffs of all newspapers—ought to be publicly hanged, that is no more than has been remarked to most writers. It occasionally happens that a journalist who is known to be connected with a weekly newspaper is let off by commentators of this kind with objurgations politely and expressly confined to daily journalists—and vice-versa, of course—but the reservation made by the speaker is none the less interesting because it is as often as not made at the last minute, or else with such deliberate emphasis as to be amusing.
Is there any tangible reason why there should be any question as to "the honour of a journalist" in any greater degree than there is a question as to the honour of a soldier, or a sailor, or a barrister, or a merchant, or a Judge ? Though, perhaps, that question is not quite rightly framed, for probably there is just as much doubt in the minds of certain people as to the morality of a barrister's calling as there is in regard to the calling of the journalist. Is it untrue that a very large number of persons conceive the object which a barrister keeps before him throughout his life
as the defence of criminals whom in his heart he sincerely believes to be guilty ? Does not the notion that "Many a burglar I've restored To his friends and his relations" very fairly sum up for them the essential achievements in the career of a successful barrister ? That may or may not be so ; but if it is so, how queer a notion many people must have of what they very likely boast of as "British justice," if they think it wrong that the pleas for an accused person should be stated with all possible strength, so as to make it always certain—so far as anything can be certain—that no innocent person shall be condemned unheard.
No doubt to a barrister it is only laughable that a certain section of the public should believe that it is his main object in life to get wicked persons let loose again on society. To a journalist it is just as ludicrous to find people expressing the opinions that he hears daily about his own profession. A Cabinet Minister remarked the other day, in making a public speech, that a well-known journalist had observed to him that "it is my business, as a journalist, to obtain information ; it is your business, as a Minister, to prevent me from obtaining it." Rightly, the Minister said that be thought that to be a wrong statement of the situation; an expression of sentiment with which journalists who in the ordinary course of life meet with all the information they require, for the purpose of com- menting upon public events, certainly would agree. But what is to be said—or is it worth saying anything ?— when it is suggested by public speakers that a journalist merely holds a brief,—that writers of leading articles, for instance, merely express, in more or less correct English, the views of their editors, and that those editors, in turn, only voice the opinions and further the political objects of their proprietors, without either editor or leader-writer necessarily expressing an honest or unbiassed opinion ? It would be idle to deny that there is such a belief current somewhere, no matter among whom it may be current; but does it agree with the facts of the case ? If it did, would there be resignations, and refusals to write except upon neutral subjects, when newspapers change hands ? Yet there always are those resignations, and there always are those refusals, whenever a paper changes its policy with its proprietor ; more than that, it would be im- possible that there should not be, the British Press being what it is. It does happen, somehow, that just as no pianist can touch the feelings of his bearers unless he can get his heart, so to speak, out at the end of his fingers, it is recog- nised by editors and proprietors alike that it would be useless, even if it were not wrong, to give a writer a " brief " for a policy in which the writer did not believe. Such a writer, urging a policy in which he himself did not believe, would carry no conviction ; he could not carry conviction, because that can only be carried by those who are convinced. There- fore, in the interests of the paper itself, if on no higher grounds, he would never be asked to advocate a policy in which he disbelieved.
But what about the news ? it may be asked,—and with some reason. Can you defend the publication of "sensational rumours" and "extraordinary theories " F Is that honest ? There, of course, the questioner is on stronger ground; and if he were to take, as a typical case for resentment against the publishers of news which afterwards turned out to be false, the accounts of the fall of the Pekin Legations four years ago, still it is undeniable that at the time when those false reports reached London from Shanghai there was little in them that seemed at the moment improbable. After all, too, who had most cause to regret the publication of false news ? That is, in any case, an insistent point. No English journal, whatever may be its politics or price, will ever find it a businesslike thing to do to publish false news. So much for the pure business of the papers themselves ; and as for the honour of the journalists who conduct them, it is a quaint comment that all tirades against the Press, if they seem to be honestly made, do eventually get into print. That is the only answer that the newspapers need make to their critics. The newspapers are paid the compliment that their critics expect their letters to be published. That compliment, paid week after week, is the answer to almost every letter written.
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