179 - 180 .
The reporter, as he sees himself crushed between the upper
and the nether millstone, is indeed far different from the reporter as he is sometimes believed to be. “ To the Parisian imagination ,” says The Nation , “ the reporter is the man who makes and un makes Ministries, drives financiers to suicide, cements or dis
rupts international alliances, beats open the doors of the Théâtre Français for ambitious vaudeville artists, and has writers and
painters eating out of his hand.” 25 To himself, he may seem to
be a person whose ideals and beliefs have been shattered by the inexorable, relentless tasks demanded by the cry “ copy .” 28 It thus seems possible to “ isolate ” one fertile source of error and find it in the region controlled by the local reporter. More over, it must be evident that these errors are apparently more frequent in the newspapers published in small towns and cities than they are in the great metropolitan dailies , and this in spite of the apparent ease with which the truth of the statements re ceived can be known or verified . A reasonable explanation of
many of these errors can be found in the necessarily small force of reporters attached to the smaller papers and to their pre sumable lack of special training for reportorial work . That the
press itself often realizes these difficulties is evident from the publicity not infrequently given to various measures attempting
to correct at least a part of the difficulty . Some of these efforts have taken the form of proposed or enacted legislation . Some what recently, a bill was introduced in the Vermont legislature
that was intended to guard newspapers against “ lying infor mants” and carrying a fine of from $ 5.00 to $20.00 for each offense
of giving false news to a newspaper with intent to deceive.27 “ There is a popular impression ,” is the comment of a news paper man , “ that all is grist that comes to the mill of a news paper; that the editor will publish , and does publish , everything
brought into the office, whereas, the truth is, that what is ten dered for publication is carefully scrutinized as to its authenticity
35" The Man with the Note- Book," The Nation , February 19, 1914, 98 : 179– 180.
36 “ Confessions of a 'Literary Journalist,'” The Bookman, December, 1907, 26 : 370 -376 . The conflict between the ambitious essayist and thenecessitous reporter is portrayed by Philip Gibbs, The Street of Adventure. 27 New York Evening Post, December 8 , 1908.
