If opinionsmay be considered nearkinsmen of news, a possible explanation for the absence of news in the press may be found in the blunt statement mademany years earlier by Edward Bulwer that new opinions were not popular . The Quarterly Review , he
says, puts forth the fewest new opinions and sells themost copies ; the Westminster , the most and sells the fewest . " The Edinburgh , hovering between , rather modifies opinion than changes its form , and it sells accordingly, a little less than the first-named journal,
and greatly more than the last.” 17 Somewhat similar reasons have been given for the absence of a radical press in America .18 If the opinions of the press tend to be colorless , the news may
tend to be colorless without the press necessarily being open to the charge of suppressing the news. The tendency of news collecting agencies is to standardize the news; the tendency of chains of papers and of press syndicates is to standardize the interpretation of news. The standardization of both news and interpretation does not necessarily connote the suppression of either. The charge is often made that the press can not be trusted because of the contradictory elements in its composition. A dyed -in -the-wool Republican papermay carry a full page politi
cal advertisement of the Democratic party; a paper may ad vertise an obviously questionable financial project, report in its
news column a suicide due to unwise investments, and editori
ally declaim against gold bricks; it may editorially urge its readers to patronize home industries while advertising the bar
gains offered in the nearest city , and the special trolley service arranged to take advantage of them . But these discrepancies
and contradictions deceive no one. All political advertisements are labeled as such , - it would be a work of supererogation for
any political party to advertise exclusively in papers of its own complexion since its business is to convert its opponents. Rep utable papers no longer admit the advertisements of question
able concerns and editorial virtue in declaiming against them , while carrying them in its own columns, illustrates the ostrich 17 England and the English , II, 14 .
18 C . E . Russell, “ The Radical Press in America ," Bookman, July , 1919, 49 : 513
