he proprietor.
It has been inevitable that as the large news-collecting organ izations have grown still larger and waxed more powerful, other organizations should grow up, less as competitors than as sup plementary associations or business enterprises formed to
furnish news to special interests. It has been equally inevitable that it quickly becomes difficult to distinguish such news agencies
from publicity bureaus pure and simple.25 Three forms of news- collecting agencies have been organized , and this must be realized in appraising their comparative value in collecting material the historian is subsequently to use . One
is the proprietary association where, as in the case of Reuter's as first organized , the newspapers “ lost control of their sources of information so far as foreign countries were concerned ” and although “ the originator of the new system did his best to secure
impartial news, that system put enormous power in the hands of correspondents, whose messages were beyond the wholesome influence of competition .” 26 It would seem inevitable that any
news-collecting agency in private hands must be in danger of having this limitation on its usefulness, yet after fifty years of service, the London Nation could say, “ The head of such a busi ness has an enormous power in his hands, but we can not recollect that it was ever used to further individual views or policies.” 27 Its real limitation is of an entirely different character . “ The
news that comes through Reuter's," continues the Nation , " is made up to such an extent of official documents, reports of
speeches, debates, trials,and the unbiassed doings of nature in time
of flood and earthquake that we had grown into the way of regarding it as something nearly as mechanical as ' the tape'. " 26 Private news service " offers to a select clientele, in letter form , intimate information, chiefly of a sort that under modern world conditions has its source in Washington . It is designed to visualize a field which is not covered by newspapers, and to supplement the press reports, which , admirable as they are, are frequently incomplete, inaccurate, and otherwise unsatisfac
tory , because of the difficult conditions under which they are assembled and printed .” - Statement of a private news service bureau . News -collecting agencies formed to distribute intelligence in regard to
foreign countries are especially in danger of unconsciously merging into publicity bureaus.
26 F . M . Thomas, Fifty Years of Fleet Street, p . 166 . 27 “ Reuter 's,” The London Nation , April 24 , 1915, 17 : 108 - 109 ; see also
A . Meister, Die deutsche Presse im Kriege und später, pp. 34 - 37 .
