NEWSPAPER REPORTING AS A POLITICAL ENGINE.
WHEN JEFFERSON expressed the opinion that a free press is more essential to a country than a government, he only put two ideas in
logical sequence—it is necessary to know what a country is and does, before you can tell how to govern it ; and if the country itself knows what it is and does, public opinion must exercise a more effectual rule than a government acting in ignorance. The value of freedom in a press by no means consists alone in freedom of com- mentary. Commentary is in great part the concentrated reflex of public opinion ; but public opinion cannot exist without informa- tion on facts as they arise : opinion is complete, mature, and potent, in proportion as that information is copious, correct, and freely circulated. The freest and most vigorous commentary, unsup- ported by a full statement of the facts on which it rests, would have little more influence than mere book learning-and abstract reasoning. Moreover, it is only with absolute freedom that the practice of giving unreserved information can obtain ; for if the in- formant has to think at every sentence whether a particular state- ment will pass the censorship or whatever authority performs the function of one, sheer distaste at so irksome a task will at once teach him to reject all doubtful matters, and nothing but what is agreeable to the authorities will appear. Those who defy that rule will be parties hostile to established authority, and their informa- tion will have the discredit that attaches to extreme and irregular views. On the other hand, perfect freedom of statement tends very materially to encourage moderation, by neutralizing extreme opinions : the ample reports of the London papers go along with the more decidedly coloured commentaries of the original writing ; every person of note in the country, of whatever party, has his opinions on the whole fully and faithfully developed in each of the principal papers; so that every newspaper reader throughout the country is supplied with facts and reflections, and ample materials for opinions of his own, independently of any one section of party- politicians. In this way, the newspaper has come to perform a very important function, impossible to be rightly performed with- out thorough freedom of statement : it is the "channel of informa- tion" between all classes in the country—it tells the country what the Legislature and Government are doing ; it tells the Govern- ment and Legislature what the country is about ; it lets the rich and the poor know what is going forward beyond their own sphere. A newspaper is a political map of the Ccuntry, as necessary to the statesman as a geographical map to the general.
Practically, the English press is the freest in'the world ; and one important result is seen in the extraordinary activity of its reporting department. Each of the chief papers has " our own correspond- ent" at every commanding point in the world, and many of those correspondents are actual reporters. As soon as any remarkable series of events sets in, in any quarter of the globe, "our own correspondent" or "our own reporter" travels thither. The war in Syria had its professional reporters ; "gentlemen connected with the press" have established a permanent footing in India; and if that class had not reached China during the late war, arrangements had evidently been made which were tantamount to having " our own reporter" on the scene of every enterprise. No sooner is Spain once more under the dominion of revolution, than the spirit of the English press roves the land in every direction, and the Cockney and ale-house politician have a more comprehen- sive and faithful view of the seat of civil war than the people at Madrid or Barcelona.
A troublous enigma arises in our own country, in South Wales ; "our own reporter" is sent to solve it—and he does so. The able and intelligent reporter of the Times is a good type of his class. He is ubiquitous in his activity ; his courage—and the office of a reporter sometimes needs no small share of cool courage—is unhesitating, to poke, unarmed and unprotected, into the most suspicious nooks ; and, with the practice of his craft strong upon him, he seizes at once upon the essential points. Some Welsh papers, before the invasion of any accredited reporter, accused their London contemporaries of defective local information. There is nothing more delusive than mere "local information." Persons on the spot are not only warped by close interests in disputed matters, but, from that circumstance, they attach undue importance to trivial things, and overlook things which are really of moment, but so familiar to them as to be matters of course. In the accounts from which we make extracts this week, the passing sketch of a remote dingle, the quotation of a translation into English by a Welshman—showing in its phrases at once that the translator is no "ignorant" man, and yet that he is re- markably ignorant of the language of our rulers and laws—these are traits which would have escaped the man of "local informa- tion," but which forcibly illustrate material circumstances of the dis- turbance. Moreover, none but a practised hand, confident in the name and resources of a great London journal, would have had so much tact and boldness in pushing himselfinto the very heart of the riot— beyond all troops, and police, and other regular functionaries.
A knowledge of the actual state of the disturbed districts is of the utmost value. One great means which "our own reporter" had at his command consisted of the prestige attaching to news- paper publicity as an auxiliary to agitation of any kind—of confi- dence in the substantial honesty of respectable newspaper reports, and of faith in the writer's singleness of purpose. The strange gentleman was admitted solely as a newspaper-reporter, where it is obvious that any other collector of information would have been avoided, or misled, if not roughly treated. This feeling it were well to encourage to the utmost, as affording the best facility to that full information whose advantages we have described. That object suggests a useful practice to be observed in courts of jus- tice—to abstain from calling reporters as witnesses in Crown prose- cutions of a political kind. Newspaper-men are admitted to all kinds of meetings, in the just belief that they go there for no pur- pose of collecting judicial " evidence " ; but sometimes they are brought forward—as at the trials in the manufacturing districts— to prove facts which they have witnessed in their professional capa- city. Were that practice to be frequent, they would be avoided, or excluded from many a political meeting, the dangers of which are neutralized by publicity. There should be no set rule on the sub- ject expressly exempting them from summons as witness; for that would at once invest them with inconvenient immunities and responsibilities : but the conductors of Crown prosecutions would do well to bear in mind, that whenever a newspaper-reporter is called as a witness, injury is done to that organ of general publicity which is one efficient safeguard of peace and good government.
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