NEWSP THE NEWS THE PAPER
AND THE HISTORIAN
has put the matter concisely when he says, apropos of certain criticisms of The Times made by Queen Victoria : “ The profit of the newspaper arises from the price paid for advertisements , but advertisements are sent by preference to
the newspaper which has the greatest circulation ; and that paper gets the widest circulation which is the most amusing, the most interesting, and the most instructive. A dull paper is
soon left off. The proprietors and managers of The Times therefore go to great expense in sending correspondents to all parts of the world where interesting events are taking place, and they employ a great many able and clever men to write articles upon all subjects which from timeto timeengage public attention ; and as mankind takes more pleasure in reading criticism and fault-finding than praise, because it is soothing to individual vanity and conceit to fancy that the reader has becomewiser than those about whom he reads, so The Times, in order to main
tain its circulation , criticises freely everybody and every thing." 149
What was true of The Times of Delane's day has apparently been true of the press everywhere and the historian must take
this into account in turning to it for reliable criticism of con temporaneous events. The tendency to omniscience often dis played by the press makes it unduly censorious of persons hold ing responsible public positions and often the most unreliable of sources for estimating justly the work of prominent leaders.150 In a memoir of William
Thomas Arnold, after his nearly
twenty years' connection with the Manchester Guardian , M . Filon wrote in the columns of the Débats :
" In the continuous effort to understand public questions,
Arnold was himself guided by the spirit and method he had acquired through his Roman History research . . . . Does not
the whole secret of good journalism depend upon the application to the men and events of the passing hour, the same critical 149 The Letters of Queen Victoria , III , 590.
150 See , e. 8 ., contemporary accounts of Washington , Jefferson , Lincoln , and Cleveland collected by the Outlook and given in the number for August
19, 1911, 98: 861- 863. The contemporary London press for the most part failed to understand
the question at issue in the American Civil War and was equally fallible
in its criticism of current events connected with it and in its prophecies as to its outcome. See Leonard Courtney, “ The Making and Reading of
Newspapers,” Contemporary Review , March , 1901, 79: 365- 376, and Leslie Stephen , The “ Times ” on the American War.
