Media

“ This summer my administration launched an unprecedented media campaign to ensure that the message comes across when young people watch television, listen to radio, or read the newspaper. But media is not enough. ”

“ The great corporations have them, the banks have them, the railroads have them, all the organizations of business and of social and political activity have them, and they are the media through which news comes. ”

“ Both forms of media critique one another and proclaim their superiority. Print media operates under a self-important sense of credibility. And the electronic media operates under a belief that they are the only purveyors of unbiased truth. ”

“ The print media, as an overlapping practical experience uniting literacy and the power of sight, are more visual today than at any previous time. We are no longer subjected-sometimes with good reason, other times for dubious motives-to the sequentiality of literacy-dominated modes of communication. An entire shared visual language is projected upon us in the form of comic strips, advertisements, weather maps, economic reports, and other pictorial representations. ”

“ According to Forbes magazine's annual study of profits, broadcasting and publishing companies led all industry groups in return on stockholder's equity and capital in recent years. Specialized publications also keep track of the profitability of the media. ”

“ Read the newspaper by headlines only,—skipping all the murders, all the fires, all the executions, all the crimes, all the news, except the most important and immediately interesting,—and you will spend perhaps fifteen or twenty minutes upon what would otherwise occupy hours. It is no exaggeration to say that most persons have spent time enough over the newspapers, to have given them a liberal education. ”

“ With the development of the press, it has now come to pass that so soon as any event, owing to casual circumstances, receives an especially prominent significance, immediately the organs of the press announce this significance. As soon as the press has brought forward the significance of the event, the public devotes more and more attention to it. The attention of the public prompts the press to examine the event with greater attention and in greater detail. ”

“ The time when the opinions, the power in phraseology, or the individuality of one man could alone make a daily newspaper a financial, literary, or political success had passed. The press had become an institution, journalism a profession, and the publication of newspapers a practical business requiring and rewarding enterprise and sagacity. ”

“ If the press be a corporation, it is a public service corporation with all of the social responsibility that this implies. The American press reflects the life of all of us, and it affects the life of all of us. We must all share the com- mon task of raising slowly, steadily, courageously this life to a higher level of truth, of justice, of good will. We, the people, make the press what it is. The press can help us to make it and all our national in- stitutions more nearly what they should be. ”

“ The Press is the great circulating medium through which she speaks to thouands in one breath, and sends truth over a whole Empire with lightning speed; thousands of Volumes of God's Word are cast abroad among the Nations of Earth's teeming millions; by means of which, we can converse with distant friends. Through the Press, the justice of God is vindicated—truth, love and mercy, shown in their true positions and relations—the social, civil and political rights of man are advocated. ”

“ Much that happens in these days is presented to the public in the words of the actors or their satellites, without evaluation through the mind of the professional journalist.
Whole sections devoted to the automobile industry, columns of theatrical "notes" and even "criticism," book "reviews," much industrial, financial and real estate "news," college and university items, stories of organized uplift movements, and a considerable body of political and administrative news from governmental centers are furnished to the press in the form of publicity "handouts." ”

“ The press, which used to be omniscient, is now only indiscriminate—a clear gain, emitting by force of publicity, if not of shine, a kind of light through whose diverse rays and foggy luster we may now and then get a glimpse of truth. ”

“ If we must give credit to the press for the diffusion of knowledge so also must we recognize its equal power to diffuse prejudice and bias. The newspaper and the magazine of to-day are vast and intricate machines that supply the great majority of us with practically all the data upon which we base our judgments. The public mind and the popular press act and react upon one another, the press setting its sails to catch every wind of public interest and the public upon its part demanding to be supplied with all those departments of news to which at the moment it is specially attracted. ”

“ This is true not only of periodicals and weeklies but also of the great morning dailies, which are by far the most influential part of that institution,16 which we casually refer to as “the press.” Here is where power is presumed to reside. Whether it be politics or art or finance, everyone, who wants anything important done to influence the general public, feels that it is here that the first and most valiant effort must be made. The press must be got at and persuaded or bullied into taking what is the only possible point of view, as each individual sees it for himself. ”

“ Magazines, the public forum, the chautauqua, the church, political gatherings, trade union meetings, women's clubs, and news serials in the moving picture houses supplement the press. But taking it all at the most favorable estimate, the time each day is small when any of us is directly exposed to information from our unseen environment. ”

“ The modern press, as we know it, is less than a hundred years old. Three generations, in this country at least, have witnessed nearly the whole of the evolution of the journalist, the man who regards the gathering, presentation and interpretation of the news of the world as a science and an art, and its practice as a profession. Before, say, 1830 we have in journalism only the psychology of the pamphleteer and the politician applied through one of the collateral activities of the job printer. ”

“ I need not elaborate upon the wonderful growth of the press in our country, or refer to the great power which journalism wields in the development of the new world. I need not ladle out statistics to show you how the newspaper has encroached upon the field of oratory and how the pale and silent man, while others sleep, compiles the universal history of a day and tells his mighty audience what he thinks about it before he goes to bed. ”

“ Truthful and accurate must be the material which the public relations counsel furnishes to the press and other mediums. In addition, it must have the elements of timeliness and interest which are required of all news—and it must not only have these elements in general, but it must suit the particular needs of each particular newspaper and, even more than that, it must suit the needs of the particular editor in whose department it is hoped that it will be published. ”

“ The Value of the Press.—The most valuable service rendered by the press is its education of the public mind, so that public opinion may register itself in intelligent action. It provides a forum for the discussion of issues that divide sects and parties, and helps to preserve religious freedom and popular government. ”

“ Originally, the Press in all countries, was intended to be the most magnificent institution of the civilized world,—the voice of truth, of liberty, of justice—a voice which in its clamant utterances could neither be bribed nor biassed to cry out false news. ”

“ So long as the press remains the greatest single medium for reaching the public mind, the work of the public relations counsel will necessarily have close contacts with the work of the journalist. He transmits his ideas, however, through all those mediums which help to build public opinion—the radio, the lecture platform, advertising, the stage, the motion picture, the mails. ”

“ But to that large part of the community who have been taught to read, but have received little other intellectual education, newspapers are the source of nearly all the general information which they possess, and of nearly all their acquaintance with the ideas and topics current among mankind; and an interest is more easily excited in newspapers, than in books or other more recondite sources of instruction. Newspapers contribute so little, in a direct way, to the origination of useful ideas, that many persons undervalue the importance of their office in disseminating them. ”

“ There should be thoughtful study of the great principles that govern human conduct. All history is useful.79 And obviously the editor cannot know too much of the fundamentals of government, of law, diplomacy, politics, and political causes, of finance, taxation, philanthropy, the relations of labor and capital and so on—the list is endless. The schools of journalism give much attention to these essentials. Their courses are prepared with great wisdom for the attainment of practical knowledge. Young men who would be journalists will profit greatly by study in these schools. ”

“ Who owns the press and why? When you read your daily paper, are you reading facts or propaganda? And whose propaganda?
Who furnishes the raw material for your thoughts about life? Is it honest material?
No man can ask more important questions than these; and here for the first time the questions are answered in a book. ”

“ In the brief time that it is proper for me to occupy, I shall apply the thought to those departments of human activity in which the sale of a soul affects others largely as well as the individual who makes the bargain.
Take the occupation in which I am engaged, journalism. It presents a great field—a growing field; in fact, there are few fields so large. The journalist is both a news gatherer and a molder of thought. ”

“ And yet, how imperfect, how inadequate is the catalogue of facts I have furnished in the foregoing pages! I have said nothing of the spread of instruction by the diffusion of the arts of reading and writing, through public schools, and the consequent creation of a reading community; the modes of manufacturing public opinion by newspapers and reviews, the power of journalism, the diffusion of information public and private by the post-office and cheap mails, the individual and social advantages of newspaper advertisements. ”

“ The newspaper press is organized so as to be a more perfect expression of public opinion than it possibly could be in your day, when private capital controlled and managed it primarily as a money-making business, and secondarily only as a mouthpiece for the people. ”

“ More than that,—and here I come to the crux of the whole business.—in my judgment, the newspaper that meets every important issue that comes up, not militantly necessarily, but squarely, is not only an example of better journalism from a moral standpoint but from a business standpoint. In other words I believe that in the long run, in spite of necessary sacrifices and set-backs, a vigorous and clear-cut editorial policy pays. ”

“ Those who have the opportunity, who can conveniently act some times attend in person and witness everything that occurs-the press is present to make a reporting on what occurs-radio is there to disseminate the information as it is produced-I can see no good reason for barring television. ”

“ Protected, as our Press is, by the genius of our Government and by its laws, we are placed in a position, where we may soon learn, if we have not already learned, the matchless and measureless influence of the Press. ”

“ And the press was the chief instrument that kept these two huge multitudes of people directed against one another.
The press--those newspapers that are now so strange to us--like the "Empires," and "Nations," the Trusts, and all the other great monstrous shapes of that extraordinary time--was in thenature of an unanticipated accident. It had happened, as weeds happen in abandoned gardens, just as all our world has happened—because there was no clear Will in the world to bring about anything better. ”

“ Having been a journalist, he knew well the power of the press for good or evil, and that led him to the idealistic conception that he could render no better public service than by founding, or getting control of, a newspaper of absolute independence and outspokenness on public matters, one devoted to the discovery and advocacy of truth, regardless of party and of all other considerations, and with such recognized ability in editorial management as would secure for it not only a local but a national influence. ”

“ If the newspaper has not the news it may have everything else, yet it will be comparatively unsuccessful; and by news I mean everything that occurs, everything which is of human interest, and which is of sufficient interest to arrest and absorb the attention of the public or of any considerable part of it. ”

“ An industry disposing, as does this one, of an enormous aggregate of capital possesses almost unlimited power of influence and suggestion. For such purposes the press is a potent instrument ready at hand. ”

“ Among us, the newspapers are the property of single individuals; and it is found that administering to the depraved tastes and appe- tites of the community, consulting the passions and caprice of the hour, and guiding their course by the variable breath of the multitude, is a more profitable, as well as an easier task, than steering undeviatingly by fixed principles, referring all subjects to the touchstone of truth, and addressing themselves with inflexible constancy to the judgments of men. ”