THE BLACKMAILING SCANDALS IN FRANCE. T HE most disheartening fact which
comes out in all recent information from the Continent is the untrust- worthiness of the Press. In every one of the great scandals which have recently shocked France—the Panama scandal, the Railway scandal, the scandals about the treatment of " the little sugar-man "—it has always in the end been discovered that, whether politicians were guilty or not, newspaper proprietors and journalists had been either accepting or extorting money. There are only two or three papers believed to be entirely clean of corruption, in its most vulgar pecuniary sense ; and even about them those who "know Paris," and who may, no doubt, have been made by that knowledge unduly suspicious, affirm that their money-articles are inspired by capitalists intent mainly on benefiting themselves. The consequences of this state of affairs are most deplorable. France was robbed in the Panama affair, mainly through the dis- honesty of the Press, of at least thirty-five millions sterling, which would never have been subscribed had the facts about the progress of the Canal been accurately reported. Even articles on foreign policy are believed to have been written for pay—certainly the correspondents affirm that about Russian articles—while, as regards great internal public works, it is asserted that all newspaper managers hold that they have a fair claim both to fees and refreshers, merely for according to such undertakings " the advantage of publicity." It follows that upon some questions the papers do not reflect opinion at all, that upon others they exaggerate opinion in order to secure the success of certain profitable plans—this certainly happened as regards Tunis, and is alleged to have happened as regards certain concessions in Madagascar—and that upon the remainder, all writing is careless because nobody feels the stimulus of seeing that there is money in them. In Germany we all know how the Guelph Fund was employed, and though that fund has ceased to exist, it is by no means certain that the influence of great capitalists, and even of secret funds, is unfelt by a portion of the Press. Its amazing unanimity about the Transvaal may be due, of course, to official pressure, which in a land where political criticism is punished with sentences of imprisonment can give the newspapers most influential " guidance ; " but if President Kruger with his great balances had desired to " conciliate " the exponents of German opinion, it may be doubted whether they all would have rejected his allurements. Matters are not much better in Italy, where all professionals are hungry, and a " credit " with a new bank is a great temptation, and in Austria, though the " influences " are different, there is little independence. Nobody, in fact, on the Continent can be sure that an ordinary Press opinion either reflects the writer's personal judgment, or is an honest endeavour to reflect the opinion of large classes of the community. It is as often as not the opinion of a class, modified, exaggerated, or made colourless in con- sequence of " pressure" or " conciliation " applied to the writers or proprietors.
It is a melancholy spectacle ; but our purpose to-day is not to moralise about it, or even to point out the monstrous evils which spring from it—the worst being that un- scrupulousness distinctly helps, instead of retarding, a journalist's career—but to argue with the better states- men of the Continent as to the proper remedy. They all at heart believe that the cause of these evils is the freedom of the Press, and that a regime of restriction would be the most effective cure. Even the Republican Government of France is inclined to propose new re- strictive laws ; while the well-intentioned Government of Austria, which, we believe, at present honestly seeks in its odd prejudiced way the permanent good of the people, cannot be persuaded to give up its stupefying power of seizing a journal by administrative decree. We are not fanatics for the Press, which, like any other power, can be used or misused ; but we do not believe a word of the restrictive argument. If a previous censorship could be established, with censors certainly competent, and unmistakably honest, and perfectly tolerant of adverse opinions, many evils would doubtless be corrected; but there never has been or will be such a censorship, and if there were, journalism would perish, the exasperation produced by such slavery driving all independent minds out of the profession. The effect on the State, too, is necessarily disastrous; for while true journalism is paralysed, the utterances of the journals gain much of the weight belonging to official despatches. The censorship in Russia is, we believe, honest, from its point of view, but the result of its labours is a Press without independence, and, except when a journalist is in favour with the Czar, and is therefore let alone, without consideration. The alternative system of severe penalties only drives solid men out of the profession, replacing them sometimes by servile scribes, sometimes by mere adventurers and spadassins of the pen, sometimes—as happened under the second Empire—by men whose first pleasure is to concoct sentences which the Magistrate cannot punish, and which bite like vitriol. " I," wrote Henri Rochefort, " am the devotee of Napoleon II., for he never reigned." Besides, look at the result. The ingenuity of statesmen has been exhausted upon the Continent in devising checks upon the Press,—and what a Press, taking it as a whole, has been produced ! The mass of papers are so little circulated, which means, are so little trusted, that their habitual excuse for corruption is that shareholders and journalists must live. The only genuine remedy is freedom—that is, the right of saying anything clearly for the benefit of the community to hear—and thus allowing the Press to acquire both influence and wealth. Serious men then devote themselves to its service, and gradually pass under the influences which control the action of politicians, and which vary in every country with the varying condition of public morality. True debating begins then ; the journalists grow eager to make their opinions, or the opinions of those whom they represent, triumph in the strife ; and the only evils are those which have always attached, and will always attach, to party contests. The journalists become a little too like politicians, a little too indifferent to their proper work, which is to throw white light upon everything worth discussing, and—a very odd fact—a little too ready to believe every statement which tells in favour of their own view of an event. One would fancy that ex- perience would teach journalists scepticism ; but Fenimore Cooper, who had a curious hatred for the profession, pointed out fifty years ago that nobody is so apt to be credulous as a journalist of strong convictions and within the last few days, when a perfect shower of truths and lies was pouring from Johannesburg, it was easy to predict with certainty which statement would be accepted in any particular journal. For all that, the English Press, which is the freest in the world, except as regards personal libel, is also the most honest, most willing to collect and diffuse accurate information, most anxious to restrain opinion within controllable bounds. There is not another Press in the world which would have treated President Cleveland's Message with the cool self-restraint displayed in every part of this country, or which could or would have defied the German Emperor without uttering a word of personal insult. We admit that the British temperament is partly responsible for the British Press ; but though the Irish Press, which is equally free, is lamentably violent in expression, we have never heard, even in the bitterest hours of party strife, that it was guilty of pecuniary corruption. A suborned Press, or a blackmailing Press, or a hireling Press, which is also an influential Press, seems to Irish- men as well as Englishmen, almost a contradiction in terms. There are plenty of evils connected with the Press, and there will be more as time goes on ; but if the Governments of the Continent wish for decent newspapers —a hypothesis we do not affirm—their course is marked out for them by undisputed examples. They have only to let the newspapers alone, and they will become so wealthy and attract writers of such a class that their devotion to law and order will become as exem plary as that of all other capitalists outside South Africa.
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