It must be apparent that no off-hand statement that the editor controls the policy of the press or that he and the paper are both controlled by the owner is of weight unless it takes into consideration the factors of time and place. Equally necessary is it to remember the variations among editors and owners and even the variations in the moods and policies of individual editors. A singularly astute review of a life of Samuel Bowles clearly shows that his theory of journalism was not the same at all stages of his career, that he came to allow his regular correspondents to wreak their spite on his friends, that he allowed the Republican to give currency to charges of implication in the Crédit-Mobilier bribery on the part of Henry M. Dawes because he knew his readers would take an interest in them, not because he believed them,—"an evasion of personal responsibility, under the guise of a highly virtuous independence."[1]
But a very different problem is presented when the question is raised as to how far the editorial expresses public opinion and how far it carries in itself a guarantee that justifies the historian in making use of it. It must be obvious that here also no categorical answer can be given, since the answer must be conditioned by the time, country, and characteristics of the paper in which it appears. The function of the editorial differs much in different countries,[2] much at different times,[3] and much in different sections of the same country,[4] while the importance of the editorial and of other parts of the newspaper have varied at different times. If at one time the generals of an army trembled before the war correspondent,[5] it is the war department and the
- ↑ The Nation, December 31, 1885, 41: 553–554.
- ↑ In England the editorial has sought to influence public opinion, in France it seeks to act on the government, while in Germany it may be influenced by the government.
"'The Times,' said Lord Clarendon , 'forms, guides, or reflects—no matter which—the public opinion of England.'"—Sir Edward Cook, Delane of "The Times," p. 294.
- ↑ "The medium through which Delane wielded his influence was a journalistic instrument of which the force has in later days been somewhat blunted—the instrument of the leading article."—Ib., p. 287.
- ↑ In the small country paper the editorial is almost disappearing, or has become stereotyped and conventional.
- ↑ "In his [W. H. Russell's] hands, correspondence from the field really became a power before which generals began to quail."—E. L. Godkin, cited in R. Ogden, Life and Letters, II, 101–102.
