53- 155.
trust also comes because the teacher must himself learn , and the public must desire to be taught; but there is little evidence of an
overwhelming desire on the part either of the press to learn or of the public to be taught. For this confusion the press itself is not altogether to be blamed .
Our educational system is still in its essential ideals founded on
the principle of authority rather than on that of research. The press can not rise higher than its source. As long as knowledge, as interpreted by this system , is something kept in a closed chest
containing the accumulations of the years and is to be handed down from generation to generation , the press will continue to conceive its function to be teaching rather than learning and thereby incur distrust. The present clamor of the press against the so -called radical press is significant in that it overlooks the original meaning of “ radical” and thereby voices its own un
willingness to get at the root of questions it discusses. Another limitation on the authoritativeness of the press is that
its own interest in itself seemsto begin and end with outstripping a neighbor in the rapidity with which it gets news. Enormous expense is incurred in getting news in advance of competitors, but no evidence is shown that equal expense is incurred in getting authoritative news. That deference is paid to the abstract
principle is indicated in the frequency with which statements are qualified by the phrases “ it is said ,” “ it is reported,” “ it is rumored ,
but these modifying terms are dropped as other
newspapers copy the information and thus rumor becomes crystallized as fact. .
This unquestioning acceptance of information has been of
long duration. “ During the eighteenth century ,” Couper writes, " the Edinburgh journals were almost parasites on thenewspapers of London and the continent. . . . Everything was admissible so long as it appeared in someaccredited journal.” 38 In America but little effort wasmade by the early press to substantiate the information received, the facilities for doing so were inadequate
even had the wish been present, little interest was shown in local news, and news from a distance came slowly and irregularly . Necessity , tradition , convenience, and long practice have 38 W . J. Couper, The Edinburgh Periodical Press
