Chesterton, Heretics, 8

The Mildness of the Yellow Press

There is a great deal of protest made from one quarter or anothernowadays against the influence of that new journalism which isassociated with the names of Sir Alfred Harmsworth and Mr. Pearson.But almost everybody who attacks it attacks on the ground that itis very sensational, very violent and vulgar and startling.I am speaking in no affected contrariety, but in the simplicityof a genuine personal impression, when I say that this journalismoffends as being not sensational or violent enough. The real viceis not that it is startling, but that it is quite insupportably tame.The whole object is to keep carefully along a certain level of theexpected and the commonplace; it may be low, but it must take carealso to be flat. Never by any chance in it is there any of that realplebeian pungency which can be heard from the ordinary cabman inthe ordinary street. We have heard of a certain standard of decorumwhich demands that things should be funny without being vulgar,but the standard of this decorum demands that if things are vulgarthey shall be vulgar without being funny. This journalism doesnot merely fail to exaggerate life--it positively underrates it;and it has to do so because it is intended for the faint and languidrecreation of men whom the fierceness of modern life has fatigued.This press is not the yellow press at all; it is the drab press.Sir Alfred Harmsworth must not address to the tired clerkany observation more witty than the tired clerk might be ableto address to Sir Alfred Harmsworth. It must not expose anybody(anybody who is powerful, that is), it must not offend anybody,it must not even please anybody, too much. A general vague ideathat in spite of all this, our yellow press is sensational,arises from such external accidents as large type or lurid headlines.It is quite true that these editors print everything they possiblycan in large capital letters. But they do this, not because itis startling, but because it is soothing. To people wholly wearyor partly drunk in a dimly lighted train, it is a simplification anda comfort to have things presented in this vast and obvious manner.The editors use this gigantic alphabet in dealing with their readers,for exactly the same reason that parents and governesses usea similar gigantic alphabet in teaching children to spell.The nursery authorities do not use an A as big as a horseshoein order to make the child jump; on the contrary, they use it to putthe child at his ease, to make things smoother and more evident.Of the same character is the dim and quiet dame school whichSir Alfred Harmsworth and Mr. Pearson keep. All their sentimentsare spelling-book sentiments--that is to say, they are sentimentswith which the pupil is already respectfully familiar.All their wildest posters are leaves torn from a copy-book.

Of real sensational journalism, as it exists in France,in Ireland, and in America, we have no trace in this country.When a journalist in Ireland wishes to create a thrill,he creates a thrill worth talking about. He denounces a leadingIrish member for corruption, or he charges the whole police systemwith a wicked and definite conspiracy. When a French journalistdesires a frisson there is a frisson; he discovers, let us say,that the President of the Republic has murdered three wives.Our yellow journalists invent quite as unscrupulously as this;their moral condition is, as regards careful veracity, about the same.But it is their mental calibre which happens to be suchthat they can only invent calm and even reassuring things.The fictitious version of the massacre of the envoys of Pekinwas mendacious, but it was not interesting, except to those whohad private reasons for terror or sorrow. It was not connectedwith any bold and suggestive view of the Chinese situation.It revealed only a vague idea that nothing could be impressiveexcept a great deal of blood. Real sensationalism, of which Ihappen to be very fond, may be either moral or immoral.But even when it is most immoral, it requires moral courage.For it is one of the most dangerous things on earth genuinelyto surprise anybody. If you make any sentient creature jump,you render it by no means improbable that it will jump on you.But the leaders of this movement have no moral courage or immoral courage;their whole method consists in saying, with large and elaborate emphasis,the things which everybody else says casually, and without rememberingwhat they have said. When they brace themselves up to attack anything,they never reach the point of attacking anything which is largeand real, and would resound with the shock. They do not attackthe army as men do in France, or the judges as men do in Ireland,or the democracy itself as men did in England a hundred years ago.They attack something like the War Office--something, that is,which everybody attacks and nobody bothers to defend,something which is an old joke in fourth-rate comic papers.just as a man shows he has a weak voice by straining itto shout, so they show the hopelessly unsensational natureof their minds when they really try to be sensational.With the whole world full of big and dubious institutions,with the whole wickedness of civilization staring them in the face,their idea of being bold and bright is to attack the War Office.They might as well start a campaign against the weather, or forma secret society in order to make jokes about mothers-in-law. Nor is itonly from the point of view of particular amateurs of the sensationalsuch as myself, that it is permissible to say, in the words ofCowper's Alexander Selkirk, that "their tameness is shocking to me."The whole modern world is pining for a genuinely sensational journalism.This has been discovered by that very able and honest journalist,Mr. Blatchford, who started his campaign against Christianity,warned on all sides, I believe, that it would ruin his paper, but whocontinued from an honourable sense of intellectual responsibility.He discovered, however, that while he had undoubtedly shockedhis readers, he had also greatly advanced his newspaper.It was bought--first, by all the people who agreed with him and wantedto read it; and secondly, by all the people who disagreed with him,and wanted to write him letters. Those letters were voluminous (I helped,I am glad to say, to swell their volume), and they were generallyinserted with a generous fulness. Thus was accidentally discovered(like the steam-engine) the great journalistic maxim--that if aneditor can only make people angry enough, they will write halfhis newspaper for him for nothing.

Some hold that such papers as these are scarcely the properobjects of so serious a consideration; but that can scarcelybe maintained from a political or ethical point of view.In this problem of the mildness and tameness of the Harmsworth mindthere is mirrored the outlines of a much larger problem which isakin to it.

The Harmsworthian journalist begins with a worship of successand violence, and ends in sheer timidity and mediocrity.But he is not alone in this, nor does he come by this fate merelybecause he happens personally to be stupid. Every man, however brave,who begins by worshipping violence, must end in mere timidity.Every man, however wise, who begins by worshipping success, must endin mere mediocrity. This strange and paradoxical fate is involved,not in the individual, but in the philosophy, in the point of view.It is not the folly of the man which brings about thisnecessary fall; it is his wisdom. The worship of success isthe only one out of all possible worships of which this is true,that its followers are foredoomed to become slaves and cowards.A man may be a hero for the sake of Mrs. Gallup's ciphers or forthe sake of human sacrifice, but not for the sake of success.For obviously a man may choose to fail because he lovesMrs. Gallup or human sacrifice; but he cannot choose to failbecause he loves success. When the test of triumph is men's testof everything, they never endure long enough to triumph at all.As long as matters are really hopeful, hope is a mere flatteryor platitude; it is only when everything is hopeless that hopebegins to be a strength at all. Like all the Christian virtues,it is as unreasonable as it is indispensable.

It was through this fatal paradox in the nature of things that all thesemodern adventurers come at last to a sort of tedium and acquiescence.They desired strength; and to them to desire strength was toadmire strength; to admire strength was simply to admire the statu quo.They thought that he who wished to be strong ought to respect the strong.They did not realize the obvious verity that he who wishes to bestrong must despise the strong. They sought to be everything,to have the whole force of the cosmos behind them, to have an energythat would drive the stars. But they did not realize the twogreat facts--first, that in the attempt to be everything the firstand most difficult step is to be something; second, that the momenta man is something, he is essentially defying everything.The lower animals, say the men of science, fought their way upwith a blind selfishness. If this be so, the only real moral of itis that our unselfishness, if it is to triumph, must be equally blind.The mammoth did not put his head on one side and wonder whethermammoths were a little out of date. Mammoths were at leastas much up to date as that individual mammoth could make them.The great elk did not say, "Cloven hoofs are very much worn now."He polished his own weapons for his own use. But in the reasoninganimal there has arisen a more horrible danger, that he may failthrough perceiving his own failure. When modern sociologists talkof the necessity of accommodating one's self to the trend of the time,they forget that the trend of the time at its best consists entirelyof people who will not accommodate themselves to anything.At its worst it consists of many millions of frightened creaturesall accommodating themselves to a trend that is not there.And that is becoming more and more the situation of modern England.Every man speaks of public opinion, and means by public opinion,public opinion minus his opinion. Every man makes hiscontribution negative under the erroneous impression thatthe next man's contribution is positive. Every man surrendershis fancy to a general tone which is itself a surrender.And over all the heartless and fatuous unity spreads this newand wearisome and platitudinous press, incapable of invention,incapable of audacity, capable only of a servility all the morecontemptible because it is not even a servility to the strong.But all who begin with force and conquest will end in this.

The chief characteristic of the "New journalism" is simply that itis bad journalism. It is beyond all comparison the most shapeless,careless, and colourless work done in our day.

I read yesterday a sentence which should be written in letters of goldand adamant; it is the very motto of the new philosophy of Empire.I found it (as the reader has already eagerly guessed) in Pearson'sMagazine, while I was communing (soul to soul) with Mr. C. Arthur Pearson,whose first and suppressed name I am afraid is Chilperic.It occurred in an article on the American Presidential Election.This is the sentence, and every one should read it carefully,and roll it on the tongue, till all the honey be tasted.

"A little sound common sense often goes further with an audience of American working-men than much high-flown argument. A speaker who, as he brought forward his points, hammered nails into a board, won hundreds of votes for his side at the last Presidential Election."

I do not wish to soil this perfect thing with comment;the words of Mercury are harsh after the songs of Apollo.But just think for a moment of the mind, the strange inscrutable mind,of the man who wrote that, of the editor who approved it,of the people who are probably impressed by it, of the incredibleAmerican working-man, of whom, for all I know, it may be true.Think what their notion of "common sense" must be! It is delightfulto realize that you and I are now able to win thousands of votesshould we ever be engaged in a Presidential Election, by doing somethingof this kind. For I suppose the nails and the board are not essentialto the exhibition of "common sense;" there may be variations.We may read--

"A little common sense impresses American working-men more than high-flown argument. A speaker who, as he made his points, pulled buttons off his waistcoat, won thousands of votes for his side." Or, "Sound common sense tells better in America than high-flown argument. Thus Senator Budge, who threw his false teeth in the air every time he made an epigram, won the solid approval of American working-men." Or again, "The sound common sense of a gentleman from Earlswood, who stuck straws in his hair during the progress of his speech, assured the victory of Mr. Roosevelt."

There are many other elements in this article on which I shouldlove to linger. But the matter which I wish to point out is thatin that sentence is perfectly revealed the whole truth of whatour Chamberlainites, hustlers, bustlers, Empire-builders, and strong,silent men, really mean by "commonsense." They mean knocking,with deafening noise and dramatic effect, meaningless bitsof iron into a useless bit of wood. A man goes on to an Americanplatform and behaves like a mountebank fool with a board anda hammer; well, I do not blame him; I might even admire him.He may be a dashing and quite decent strategist. He may be a fineromantic actor, like Burke flinging the dagger on the floor.He may even (for all I know) be a sublime mystic, profoundly impressedwith the ancient meaning of the divine trade of the Carpenter,and offering to the people a parable in the form of a ceremony.All I wish to indicate is the abyss of mental confusion inwhich such wild ritualism can be called "sound common sense."And it is in that abyss of mental confusion, and in that alone,that the new Imperialism lives and moves and has its being.The whole glory and greatness of Mr. Chamberlain consists in this:that if a man hits the right nail on the head nobody cares where he hitsit to or what it does. They care about the noise of the hammer, not aboutthe silent drip of the nail. Before and throughout the African war,Mr. Chamberlain was always knocking in nails, with ringing decisiveness.But when we ask, "But what have these nails held together?Where is your carpentry? Where are your contented Outlanders?Where is your free South Africa? Where is your British prestige?What have your nails done?" then what answer is there?We must go back (with an affectionate sigh) to our Pearsonfor the answer to the question of what the nails have done:"The speaker who hammered nails into a board won thousands of votes."

Now the whole of this passage is admirably characteristic of the newjournalism which Mr. Pearson represents, the new journalism which hasjust purchased the Standard. To take one instance out of hundreds,the incomparable man with the board and nails is described in the Pearson'sarticle as calling out (as he smote the symbolic nail), "Lie number one.Nailed to the Mast! Nailed to the Mast!" In the whole office therewas apparently no compositor or office-boy to point out that wespeak of lies being nailed to the counter, and not to the mast.Nobody in the office knew that Pearson's Magazine was fallinginto a stale Irish bull, which must be as old as St. Patrick.This is the real and essential tragedy of the sale of the Standard.It is not merely that journalism is victorious over literature.It is that bad journalism is victorious over good journalism.

It is not that one article which we consider costly and beautiful is beingousted by another kind of article which we consider common or unclean.It is that of the same article a worse quality is preferred to a better.If you like popular journalism (as I do), you will know that Pearson'sMagazine is poor and weak popular journalism. You will know itas certainly as you know bad butter. You will know as certainlythat it is poor popular journalism as you know that the Strand,in the great days of Sherlock Holmes, was good popular journalism.Mr. Pearson has been a monument of this enormous banality.About everything he says and does there is something infinitelyweak-minded. He clamours for home trades and employs foreignones to print his paper. When this glaring fact is pointed out,he does not say that the thing was an oversight, like a sane man.He cuts it off with scissors, like a child of three. His very cunningis infantile. And like a child of three, he does not cut it quite off.In all human records I doubt if there is such an example of a profoundsimplicity in deception. This is the sort of intelligence which nowsits in the seat of the sane and honourable old Tory journalism.If it were really the triumph of the tropical exuberance of theYankee press, it would be vulgar, but still tropical. But it is not.We are delivered over to the bramble, and from the meanest ofthe shrubs comes the fire upon the cedars of Lebanon.

The only question now is how much longer the fiction will endurethat journalists of this order represent public opinion.It may be doubted whether any honest and serious Tariff Reformerwould for a moment maintain that there was any majorityfor Tariff Reform in the country comparable to the ludicrouspreponderance which money has given it among the great dailies.The only inference is that for purposes of real public opinionthe press is now a mere plutocratic oligarchy. Doubtless thepublic buys the wares of these men, for one reason or another.But there is no more reason to suppose that the public admirestheir politics than that the public admires the delicate philosophyof Mr. Crosse or the darker and sterner creed of Mr. Blackwell.If these men are merely tradesmen, there is nothing to say exceptthat there are plenty like them in the Battersea Park Road,and many much better. But if they make any sort of attemptto be politicians, we can only point out to them that they are notas yet even good journalists.