THE "EXPANSION" OF TELEGRAMS.
IT is not the Times alone that has been victorious in the case of Walter v. The Central News Agency." The result is equally a triumph for all who value accuracy in the transmission of news. The abridgment incidental to the despatch of costly telegrams necessitates some ex- pansion at the other end of the wire. There are certain little words which are always omitted as a matter of course from news telegrams, and these it is con- venient to have inserted before they are given to the public. What we want in a newspaper telegram is the largest amount of fact combined with the smallest amount of "decoration." For the decoration is neces- sarily added at the port of arrival. The sender of the telegram brings what he has to send within the lowest possible limits. Whatever is superfluous will have to be paid for by his employer, and he knows that his employer will not care for graces of style when every letter in them means money. But the employer himself is under quite another set of influences. He begins by adding what his correspondent has obviously omitted,—" titles, conjunctions, and words like ' the," of," an," for,' " In this way he makes the telegram intelligible. It conveys the bare meaning of the correspondent who has sent it. But when this preliminary care has been bestowed upon it, it seems to want something more. It now stands for a considerable amount of labour, and yet in point of style and information it hardly seems to be worth the time spent on it. A little complication here, a few additions there, a gap filled in in one place, a suggestion followed out in another, will do far more in the way of improvement than is represented by the added cost, and moreover this added cost will come out of some one else's pocket. This kind of reasoning is built up step by step. The improvement of telegrams is a work in which one success leads on to another. In the case of the Central News the process went very far. Under the hand of the decorator, telegrams that originally consisted of 1,264 words grew to 7,947 words. Nor was the gain only a matter of words. It was equally marked in the substance of the telegrams. " Wei-hai-wei taken," a simple message of two words and as many hyphens, grew into one of 135 words. We do not question the improvement that resulted from the process. The reader of the telegrams got a great deal which the authors of them had never thought of sending. Taking only the telegrams which formed the sub- ject of the action, 7,400 words had become 33,000, and there had been a proportionate—a more than proportionate —expansion of the interest. The two words," Wei-hai-wei taken," had lost all their baldness, and had come to embrace "a number of incidents of which there was no suggestion whatever in the original." A mere allusion to a "Japanese fourth charge " had been made the occasion of " a graphic description of the three previous charges of which no details at all had been received." The communi- cation of "an eye-witness" became the communication of "an intelligent British naval offieer,"—thereby gaining im- mensely in authenticity and value. In short, everybody's pleasure was enhanced except that of the purists of the Times. They alone caviled at the beneficent labours of the Central News. Nor, when we come a little closer to their objection, can we wonder that they should have felt it. In the first place, telegrams cost money, and the wish to get what we suppose ourselves to be buying is not an unreasonable one. In this instance the Times was assuredly not getting what it supposed itself to be buying. It got its telegrams no doubt, but it also got a great deal more, and the additions were charged at the same price. Every telegram was a composite production, consisting partly of genuine message, partly of supple- mentary matter. But this supplementary matter was of the nature of penny-a-lining, very good penny-a-lining we daresay, but still penny-a-lining. If it had been described. as such, if " Wei-hai-wei taken " had been printed. with a note, " The Central News have kindly furnished us with the following imaginary details," or if we had read, " The particulars of the three Japanese charges, on which the fourth followed have been supplied by the Central News from their general knowledge of similar incidents," not a word need have been said. But then this unvarnished method of presenting the facts would have waited neither party. The Times only wanted telegrams, and had the additions been labelled it would have declined to pay for them. The Central News regarded the whole transaction in a business light, and was not at all anxious to give the produce of its home industries for nothing. The result of the trial has established the point for which the Times contended. The Central News had agreed to supply a particular class of goods, and it broke its con- tract when it not only supplied these goods but also in- cluded under the same label another description of goods. When Mr. Carson came to consider the case as presented by his clients, he advised them that they could. not resist a verdict for breach of contract, whether express or im- plied. On the other hand, Sir Frank Lockwood, the counsel for the Times, was willing to withdraw unre- servedly the charge of fraud. The Central News have ex- pressed their regret that the Times should have been mis- led into thinking the messages it received were practically identical with those sent to the agency, and have con- sented to pay the costs of the action. The conclusion of the whole matter was well stated by Mr. Justice Hawkins. A very objectionable system has been put an end to. News agencies now know that telegrams are something more than heads for amplification, and newspapers know that it is well from time to time to check the tendency of the news agencies to embroider as well as edit the matter sent to them, by insisting on the production of the original telegrams. The Times is quite justified in its contention that " in this matter as in many other cases" it "has fought at its own charges the battle of the Press at large as well as that of the public." The buyers of newspapers are " entitled to receive what professes to be sold to them as foreign news in a trustworthy and unadulterated form." We are not quite so sure that they care very much for the maintenance of this birthright. They are too much in- clined, we suspect, to judge of the interest and im- portance of a telegram by its length, and, provided that this is adequate, to assume that all else is as it should be. It is well, therefore, that they should have the Times to exert on their behalf the caution which they have not the means, perhaps not even the will, to exert for themselves. The enterprise of that great journal is well-known, but if it had acquiesced in the methods adopted by the Central News, that enterprise would have stopped short at giving the largest possible quantity of news, and would not have comprised any care for its quality. In view of " the passion of the public for the fullest and the earliest details of everything that is occurring at any given moment in every part of the world," it is of the greatest importance that some one should make it his duty " to prevent anything fr,:n being published as fact testified to upon the spot, which is really the imaginative addition of some one making up telegrams for publication." This is what the Times has done, and for doing it it deserves the gratitude of every newspaper-reader. Still more, however, does it deserve the gratitude of every newspaper-writer. To the general public a telegram is little more than a source of more or less intelligent amusement ; to the journalist it is material for the formation of the opinions to which it is his constant business to give expression. The value of these opinions is determined by two conditions,—the amount of honest wisdom that goes to the framing of them, and the fact that this honest wisdom is accompanied by an accurate knowledge of the facts upon which it is exercised. If this accurate knowledge is wanting, the equipment of the journalist is dangerously incomplete, and the Times has done a conspicuous service to its colleagues in the Press by putting an end to a practice which threatened to make such accurate knowledge almost unattainable.
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