THE POPULAR NEWSPAPERS have lon g had an unpleasant tradition of
crabbing the pet projects of other popular newspapers, whatever merits those projects might have. Any newspaper which has unsuccessfully bid against another newspaper for the serial rights of a book, for instance, may confidently be expected to give a hostile review to the book. But this kind of 'you-don't-scratch- my-back-and-I-won't-scratch-yours' attitude seems to me to be getting worse. Not long ago we had the spectacle of the Daily Express crabbing Mr. Noel Barber's North Pole coup because the Daily Mail happened to think of it first. Now we have another Daily Mail stunt, the trip across the Atlantic by balloon, receiving practically no attention from any other newspaper. Why not? It is a stunt, of course, but it is exactly the kind of stunt that the Express and the Mirror, say, are usually full of, and at least as newsworthy (by those papers' standards, at any rate) as the stuff they have been printing while the balloon has been drifting through the clouds. Is this the other side of the newspapers' dog-don't-eat-dog coin? I confess I find it childish and petty; it seems appropriate that the balloon's name is The Small World. BBC television, for once, is fulfilling its proper function; Tonight has been regularly featuring the balloon and its trip.
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