assuredly discard the press as an authoritative source in his re construction of the past. But it must be noted in connection with this blanket arraignment that it is through the press itself that these charges are circulated and that this must discount their value, — were the press guilty of all these high crimes and mis demeanors, it would hardly spread abroad the news of its own shame. It must be put to the credit of the press that the very
papers that expose these conditions, as far as they really exist,
are helping to improve them through the publicity the discussion of them gives. And it must be remembered that it is easy to
judge the press by its worst representatives, that a few con spicuous illustrations of its rampant errors serve, in the eyes of
many, as a sufficient basis for a sweeping condemnation of the press as a whole, and that standards of perfection are raised for the press collectively that never could be applied to individuals .
It is, indeed , easy to fall into the habit of criticizing the press, it is the expected thing and often not to be taken more seriously than are generalizations about the weather of the past. There is
a tendency to include all papers , of all times, and of all countries in these blanket charges. But while they may be partially true of certain papers at certain times in certain countries, wholesale denunciations are as false and as pernicious as are the correspond ing panegyrics of the press. The criticism of the press most frequently heard and that, if true, most limits its authoritativeness is that the press does not give the news, but wilfully suppresses it through fear of offending
its advertisers, or prominent citizens to whom it is beholden , or for other unspecified reasons. The statement that the papers do not give the news is probably as old as the newspapers themselves and in and of itself is not to be taken more seriously than did the Massachusetts Centinel, in
reporting, June 29, 1785, “ The general complaint in the coffee houses for some time has been that there is nothing in the papers . . . in short, all is dead, and there is nothing in the papers," —
much to the disappointment of all as expressed by the politicians, old women ,and“ those who are curious in physic and philosophy," and the Centinel adds, “ all patients are in perfect health .” 6
•J. T. Buckingham ,Specimens of Newspaper Literature, II, 35 -36.
