September 1947 — Vol. 28, No. 9 —
Canada's Newspapers
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Newspapers excite curiosity. Everyone lays
hold on the paper with eagerness while the ink is still wet;
no one puts it aside without a feeling of disappointment.
Everything that one wants is never in it. There seems to be
a great deal about something someone else may be interested
in, and not enough about one's own pet interests.
The newspaper is up to the minute. Editors think in terms
of today, with a fleeting glance at tomorrow, but never of
yesterday except as a sketchy background. It is a wonder that
out of all the scurrying around newsmen must do, we obtain
as much benefit as we do from the newspaper press. To give
us this service requires, as Lord Hewart put it: "amazing
ability, diligence, care and learning, wit, burnout, skill,
versatility, dutifulness, courage and sheer hard work."
Most persons in cities think of dailies when newspapers
are mentioned, but there are nearly 1½ million persons in
Canada who subscribe to 750 weeklies. These weekly newspapers,
which move at a slower and more sedate pace than the dailies,
make up an important part of community life. They print items
about residents and about local events; like their subscribers,
they say "hello" to everybody.
Whether it is a weekly or a daily, the newspaper is made
by men who are much alike. Editors have been described as
cub reporters who have grown up and settled down. They have
overcome their urge to participate in every event, to ride
on the fire reels and mix with the police in tracking criminals.
Their new duty is to see the whole show, and to do that they
must stay in their seats. The great editors are not speech—making
crusaders, but people who know how to get the news, get it
right, get it first, get it into print, and comment on it
intelligently.
Circulation and Advertising
Before discussing what they put into their newspapers, it
would be well to make a courtesy reference to the business
departments. Circulations have increased greatly in—recent
years, indicating that editorial departments are filling a
public need in their presentation of news and views.
In February this year the President of the Canadian Daily
Newspapers Association said combined circulation of Canadian
dailies had reached a total of 2,860,000, actually higher
than the number of families in the Dominion. This was an increase
of 733,000 since 1938.
Advertising departments, too, report themselves in healthy
condition. Total expenditures by Canada's 100 biggest advertisers
in 1946 in 90 dailies, 4 weekend papers, 15 magazines and
14 farm papers, amounted to $13.3 million, an increase of
8.4 per cent over 1945, according to the magazine Marketing.
This may be the place to comment on a statement sometimes
heard to the effect that advertisers "support" newspapers.
Advertising is a business, and the support is not a subsidy,
but payment for a service. "That is why", said the New York
Times editorially, "there is so "little point or truth in
most accusations that newspapers are 'dominated' by the political
views of their advertisers. A paper's advertisers, like its
readers, are a numerous and heterogeneous group, of many diverse
opinions. The newspaper has no way of knowing what the political
and economic views of its advertisers are."
The Editor Has Problems
All kinds of people buy newspapers, people of all ages,
creeds, callings and tastes. They bring to bear upon the editor
varying amounts of suggestion, advice and demands. It takes
just as much courage for an editor to start publishing a new
feature today as it did to start Daniel Defoe's revolutionary
"Robinson Crusoe" as a 165—week serial in the Saturday
Post 200 years ago. But that is nothing compared with the
courage needed to discard a feature. Crossword puzzles
show a readership value of only 8 to 12 per cent, but editors
have given up attempts to drop them because the complaining
letters from a vocal minority carry greater weight than any
statistical survey.
Editors are always short of space. They have to be drastic
about cutting down some things in order to give representation
to many things, though sponsors or writers of the mutilated
articles may cry to high heaven against the sacrilege. As
Philip Gibbs made one of his characters say in "Street of
Adventure": "If there was an earthquake at Tooting Bec, and
if all the animals at the zoo broke loose and dined off the
population round Regent's Park, you can't get more than 56
columns in an 8—page paper. That's simple arithmetic."
A complaint heard now and then is that the quantity of advertising
over—shadows the space given to news and features. An
examination of two weeks' issues of newspapers published in
Montreal, Vancouver, Toronto, Winnipeg, Halifax and Calgary
shows the recent average to be pretty nearly the standard
of many years: 42 per cent news to 58 per cent advertising.
The accepted proportion, according to the textbooks, was 40
per cent news and 60 per cent advertising.
To squeeze into this limited space a selection of news and
features that will be of service to his readers, the news
editor needs a particularly well developed ability to go outside
himself. In the course of a day he handles a great mass of
copy that insofar as he is personally concerned is absolutely
dead. He must, therefore, project himself into the place of
his readers, decide what they wish to hear about, know what
they are talking about, and weigh the relative importance
of this and that desire.
Editors know they can't satisfy everyone. Away back in 51
B.C. Cicero complained that his professional news correspondent
was giving him too much of sporting events and not enough
about the political situation. People seem, as a rule, to
prefer reading about a dog fight on their own street rather
than about a war in the Gran Chaco. The day Mussolini became
dictator of Italy, the news was crowded off United States
front pages by the Halls Mills murder case. When Dempsey knocked
out Firpo that was all the Spanish news America could stand,
and it eclipsed the military coup in Spain under Primo de
Rivera. The assassination of the Austrian Archduke, which
set alight the first world war, was given only an inch space
in most newspapers. "Interesting" news, which probably means
news that touches their personal lives or experiences or knowledge,
attracts the mass audience, while, regrettable as it may appear
in this enlightened age, the merely important is addressed
to small publics.
The Canadian Press
In view of the necessity of having an adequate news supply
from which to select what the editor thinks will best fill
the needs of his readers, it is essential that a newspaper
should have good sources. All newspapers have their own reporters,
some of whom cover general "beats" while others specialize
in sports, municipal affairs, courts, and social events. In
addition, practically all daily newspapers and many weeklies
take a service from The Canadian Press, a co—operative
enterprise organized about 30 years ago. Its General Manager,
Gillis Purcell, wrote for this survey:
"Canadian newspapers present a news—picture of the
world as complete as that presented in any country. In many
ways, it is more accurately drawn.
"If you regard as the ideal a paper like The Times in London
or the New York Times, Canadian newspapers as a whole rank
closer to this conception than do newspapers generally in
the United Kingdom or the United States. You find the news
of the world reported broadly, objectively and fully in virtually
every Canadian daily, large or small.
"News is handled 'straight' in virtually every case; editorial
comment goes in the editorial columns. With no comparable
concentrations of population, Canada hasn't the million—and—more—circulation
papers whose news—handling in New York and London is
aimed solely at circulation and opinion—making.
"In the Canadian West, there is no tendency to ditch world
news as there is generally - with the exception of half—a—dozen
outstanding papers - in the United States MiddleWest and West.
Nor is there the concentration on local news that marks so
many of the British provincial papers.
"It's the nature of the country and its people that makes
Canada's papers so fair and open of mind in handling news.
The country is small enough in point of population to have
to look out on the world. Its people have learned to be friends
of great nations sometimes not too friendly with one another.
"In its exchange of Canadian news across the Dominion, The
Canadian Press has been one of the great factors in building
national unity. But CP's balanced objectivity in handling
world news is primarily a reflection of the nature of the
Canadian people."
Foreign News is Important
Foreign news is particularly important in these days when
so much that happens at home is linked in some way with far—off
events: There can be no One World, no effective United Nations,
no final guarantee of peace, said the New York Times recently,
until all the peoples of the earth have access to all the
news they need. A programme was brought forward in May as
an objective for the International Conference on Freedom of
Information: to facilitate the gathering and transmission
of news, to implement the right of all persons and peoples
to accurate, comprehensive and representative information,
to provide for organization in all principal news centres
of a foreign correspondents' corps with strict, self—administered
codes of ethics, and to provide continuing machinery to promote
the free flow of true information.
This last provision is important. It may be said that in
order to attract the maximum audience the press emphasizes
the exceptional rather than the representative, the dramatic
rather than the significant; but increasing attention needs
to be paid to seeing that the resulting picture is true. More
people today than ever before are interested in knowing not
only what is happening, but why it is happening. Newspapers
aware of this trend have been attempting to provide interpretative
material along with the news.
Editorial Page Functions
Such intelligent reporting should not be confused with editorializlng.
Every important paper has editorial writers to comment on
the news. There was an ancient rule that the news columns
should contain positively no editorializing, but this, particularly
in regard to political matters, is not universally observed.
There are remarkable differences between the number of persons
reading editorials in one paper and those reading editorials
in another. An investigation reported in Mercury magazine
said that out of 72 newspapers surveyed, the lowest editorial—readership
score was 17 per cent men and 9 per cent women, while the
newspaper with the highest score had as editorial readers
73 per cent men and 51 per cent women. The moral seems to
be that editorial pages which offer genuinely worthwhile fare
need not worry about reader appetite.
Editorial writers, like news editors, are up against the
problem of selection of topics and treatment. Readers are
no longer satisfied with Jovian thunder unless it is accompanied
by some illumination. The editorial writer with a sense of
responsibility will try to give his readers a balanced presentation
of basic facts, suggest alternatives, tell the purposes of
proposed action, and illuminate the whole matter by his skillful
thought and observation. Merely to make statements, however
portentous, is to be as ineffective in moving the public as
was the little girl who reported to her teacher: "I told my
brother that when you die you cannot breathe and he did not
say a word. He just kept on playing."
When thundering is indulged in it must be sincere. A neutral
policy on important public issues, a middle—of—the—road
course: these are safest but hardly stimulating. On the other
hand, editorial pages which fulminate on international affairs
and things of long ago and far away, fearlessly attacking
man—eating sharks while ignoring local breaches of peace,
order and good government, these are not giving satisfaction
to thinking readers. Saturday Night (which asks editorially
that people who quote it should not call it "The Saturday
Night" or "Toronto Saturday Night" but just "Saturday
Night") had an article in June a year ago which remarked:
"The politicians could do a much better job if the papers
did their own job properly, instead of taking a strong stand
on everything on which they are sure that all their readers
agree with them, and saying nothing about all the questions
on which there is disagreement and uncertainty."
To find out what Canadian editorial writers believe is good
for their readers, we made an analysis of two weeks' editorials
in each of six daily newspapers. Of the 305 editorials examined,
there were 94 on international topics; 76 on national; 22
on provincial and 24 on municipal subjects. The balance was
made up of welfare, health and social subjects 22; economics
and labour 27; obituaries, congratulations, and other personal
references 21; religion 5; comments on science 2, and odds—and—ends
12.
Criticism of Newspapers
There are several points on which newspapers are criticized.
Criticism is a good thing. As was remarked in an article in
the Montreal Gazette this spring: "Serious, searching and
regular criticism of the press is the ultimate safeguard of
its freedom. The lack of it deprives the press itself of the
benefits of the very principle of which the press is, in relation
to everything else, the chief exponent."
Probably the charge most often heard is that the press is
sensational. Reporters on a good story are reluctant to prick
the bubble that reflects the world in brilliant colours and
turn it to a little soap and water. Editors know that their
circulation is largely determined by the brightness of their
copy; some persons mistake this brightness for sensationalism.
There are editors, of course, who lapse into catchpenny huckstering,
but it must be admitted there are not many such in Canada.
Canadian papers are not, as a rule, given to exaggeration,
though they do sometimes slip into gibberish about miracle
drugs and electronic brains. Bad popularizing of scientific
subjects may do great harm, not alone by giving wrong information
but by destroying faith in the newspapers which print it.
Readers should bear in mind that most popularizers are writing
to sell, and are not, as a general rule, principally exercised
about spreading good. Their statements and judgments, particularly
in health matters, should be checked with a professional man.
A criticism levelled against some newspapers is that they
are organs of "propaganda." Propaganda is anything you read
that makes you feel some action should be taken, and it would
be a poor news sheet whose articles and editorials never gave
that feeling. The kind of propaganda to beware of is the insidious
kind that is more often met with in "organs of opinion" than
in Canadian newspapers - the kind that uses "colour" or "weasel"
words, mostly adjectives such as "ruthless, confused, bureaucratic,
grasping." It would be well, when you come upon an article
loaded with adjectives, to go back and read it with the adjectives
left out, in order to make an unbiased judgment.
Another criticism, one that is too widely merited for comfort,
is that newspapers colour reports, particularly of political
events and speeches. Some of us are prompted to inquire whether
newspapers have kept up with the broadening education they
have had so large a part in making available to the public.
This education has taught people to think for themselves,
to recognize that there are at least two sides to every story,
and to suspect oracles. Yet some newspapers continue to spoon—feed
their readers. They attempt to lead them, openly as in editorials
or by subtlety in coloured articles (or, as newspapermen call
them, articles that are "slanted" or have particular "angles"
played up).
Newspapers should, in their own interests, be their own
chief critics, because it is an inescapable fact that if they
fail in self—control and come to regard freedom of the
press as license, the time will come when the public will
demand outside control. Then, should the government be persuaded
to step in to control the newspapers, our chief guard against
totalitarianism would be lost. The newspapers in Canada must
realize their responsibility to protect freedom, and that
they can do their part by avoiding error, bias, carelessness,
prejudice, and false colour. As F. I. Ker said in his address
as President of The Canadian Press last April: "The press
holds a mirror to the happenings of the day. Unless the mirror
is as flawless as it is humanly possible to make it, its reflections
will be distorted. When distortion occurs in one newspaper,
The Canadian Press and all who print its news may suffer."
Censorship of the Press
Censorship of the press is not an immediate menace in Canada.
Outside the democracies the coverage of news is much less
complete than it is in this country.
Whole populations are denied news, while such newspapers
as there are obey governmental dictates by publishing only.
material which will further the government's alms. As Herbert
Brucker, widely—experienced newspaperman and a professor
at Columbia, puts it: "This public—opinion technique
of...trying to make the real world conform to an artificial
mental one, is an inherent part of the totalitarian method.
The results in terms of the wreckage of things past now strewn
about the world, indicate that the method is effective, in
its way."
That way is a way of destruction, the suicide of personal
freedom, and the smothering of intelligent thought. Canada
has no peace—time censorship, puts no embargo on the
import or export of news, and does not tell editors what to
print, what opinions to express, what "causes" to support.
The policy of public criticism is understood and accepted.
Such criticism as there was of the Hong Kong or Dieppe expeditions
could never have been made in dictator countries.
Freedom of the Press
Few safeguards of public welfare have been more hardly won,
says Wickham Steed, than freedom of the press. Where men cannot
without fear convey their thoughts to one another, no other
liberty is secure. A free press must be free from compulsions
from any source, governmental or social. As Milton pointed
out in his great plea for freedom to publish: it Is impossible
to determine whose judgment shall decide what is good or worthy
for the public to read. Only public support can be accepted
as a safe criterion: the unworthy publications will find few
readers who derive benefit from them and will soon cease to
exist.
Canadian newspapers are in the fight for world—wide
freedom of news, and all political leaders in Canada have
expressed approval of the movement. George V. Ferguson, editor
of the Montreal Star, has been elected a member of the Freedom
of Information Subcommission of the United Nations Commission
on Human Rights. The need for this commission is a warning
against the complacency with which Canadians accept their
freedoms. Practically all countries now entangled in the web
of controlled information were once free from it, and had
the feeling: "it can't happen here."
Freedom of speech and of the press are not ends in themselves.
They merely enable people to express freely their thoughts
on events so as to bring forth the best possible decision
out of all shades of opinion. In other words, this is not
merely "freedom from" but "freedom for." A person may cause
evil not only by his actions but by his inactions. As Andrew
Hamilton said at the trial of a printer in New York away back
in 1735: "...I beg leave to lay it down as a rule that the
suppressing of evidence ought to be taken for the
strongest evidence." Knowledge and civilization are
advanced by positive actions, not by merely refraining from
other actions, or by retaining unquestioningly the existing
state of things. Newspapers need to use fully the freedom
that is theirs. They need to keep on challenging the sacred
cows which occasionally stand in the streets blocking progress.
Duties of the Newspaper
Besides rights, the newspaper has duties. It must be independent.
It cannot serve the public which supports it if it is the
tail to anyone's kite. To be independent it must stand on
its own feet, earning a profit without subsidies. It should
be regarded as a major transgression of ethics and good taste
to communicate with the editorial department through the business
department.
The newspaper needs to take a long view. A policy which
gains circulation this year by means which tend to weaken
the newspaper as an institution is a bad policy.
The newspaper must be fair. Perhaps absolute fairness is
too much to expect of ordinary mortals doing their day's work,
but the newspaper can avoid intentional partiality.
The newspaper must be decent, not only in the language and
pictures it uses, but in the way it goes about obtaining its
news. There are situations occurring in human life into which
no newspaper can decently justify intrusion.
Current pessimism about the press should not be over—estimated.
There has been similar pessimism in the past. If reforms are
needed, they will not be shaped by legislation, except with
the destruction of values civilization needs. They can be
brought about by public opinion which supports the right kind
of newspaper and makes its wishes known to publishers and
editors.
Published by RBC Financial Group. All editions from the RBC
Letter collection are available on our web site at www.rbc.com/responsibility/letter.
Our e-mail address is: rbcletter@rbc.com.
Publié aussi en francais.
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