February 7, igi8 
Land & Water 
21 
Life and Letters ^ J. C Squire 
The Liars 
MR. BELLOC'S small book, Tlic Free Press 
(George Allen and Ihiwin, js. 6d. net) is a re- 
print of articles contribut<(l to tlic New Ase, 
itself one of tlie few papers in which vou find 
truths which you do not find elsewhere. The 
book deals largely, not with the free press, but with the 
press which is not free ; and his exposure -although, owin,t,' 
lo its brevity, it neglects fine distinctions-should be read 
bv e^•erv(>ne"who is interested in things as they are. 
4: + * 4: * 
It would be ail error to say that the Vress is universally 
revered by Englishmen. There are few Englisimien who 
have not at one time or other been heard to observe that 
" the papers are full of a lot of lies." But there are still fewer 
who know a lie 'when they sec it, who habitually observe 
distortions and suppressions (the most popidar form of lie), and 
(above all) who realise how and why it is that the commercial 
newspaper must lie, and why the contemporary newspaper 
is a more systematic and subtle liar than its predecessors. 
In short, the economic basis of the thing is not understood. 
This Mr. Relk)c has explained with excellent clarity. 
***** 
Die.re <ue differences. Wealtliy men have been known to 
run newspapers at a heavy and foreseen loss in order to run 
particular programmes. Even these, as a, rule, do not want 
lit lose too much and will compromise a great deal ; the 
majority are out to make money at any cost, and there is only 
one way of doing it. They have to get the advertisers in. 
.\dvertisement revenue is the basis of the modern newspaper. 
.\ newspaper which gets a huge income from advertisements 
ran afford to supply the public with twopence worth of jiaper, 
ink. !iews, and other reading matter for a penny. A paper 
which did not get advertisements could not stand up against 
this. It cannot compete, in the market ; it cannot supply tlje 
acres of print that the cjrdinary reader appears to desire ; 
it cannot (unless there is somebody prodigiously rich and 
|irodigal b<-hind it) supply even as much good, reliable, non- 
controversial news as its rivals ; it cannot, therefore, exist. 
We have here two facts : that the newspaper likeliest to 
survive is (i) run by a man primarily out for loot, and bbnse- 
(pieiitlv likely to exercise political power (when, having be- 
coming sufticiently rich, he hungers for something more) in 
an ignorant, corrupt, and disastrous way ; and (2) that adver- 
tisers are likely to be the real ultimate masters of the paper. 
It is not that all advertisers are conscious of this, or that 
many of them openly walk into the office and say : " Write 
this or we clear out." Such things dl) happen. When a 
few years ago a Government C(jmmittee exposed the swindles 
o'f the patent medicine trade, a number of the wealthiest and 
least reputable of the quacks, privately intimated that adver- 
tisements would be withdrawn if publicity were given to the 
report, with the result that there was a remarkably general 
agreement that the report had no " news value." But 
usually the pressure is indirect. The advertiser will be 
hoked off a paper in which he or his associates see things 
that the\- strongly dislike : he will even persuade himself that 
it has no circulation. He will go where his own mind is 
reflected ; or at least to safe places where the fight against a 
status quo that he likes is more sham than real. The result is 
a general cowardice and timidity iji the most widely circulated 
pajx-rs, and a frequent deliberate mendacity in particular. 
* « * « * 
To that mendacity there are limits. As Mr. Belloc suggests, 
it would not do for a paper to say that the Pope had turned 
Methodist. But the limits are remarkably wide. Beyond 
the deliberate furthering of class interests, there is also a 
general class ignorance and shortsightedness. To this I do 
not think that Mr. Belloc attaches sufficient importance. 
He remarks on the time it often takes before a big proletarian 
movement— industrial or other- gets into the Press. This 
is indisputable ; but it is not always directly traceable to a 
deliberate desire not to " advertise " the movement. The 
journalists themselves — and their public, also, if it is a pros- 
perous public— cannot take any interest in these things. 
Strikes and lock-outs, for instance, they regard as dull and 
unimportant until and unless they inconvenience themselves ; 
it never occurs to these " organs of popular opinion " to dis- 
cover and explain the actual feelings of the (possibly) hundreds 
of thousands of people involved ; as often as not they scarcely 
hear of such events imtil long after they have become im- 
portant. They live in their o\\ n world of intellectual lethargv 
and party politics. 
* * * * * 
It is impossible to cover this subject here ; Mr. Belloc him- 
self could have made a much bigger book out of it. But the. 
])lirase " party jiolitics " does suggest one illustration of the 
utter unreality of our newspapers, ^'ou do not expect a paper 
to tell the whole tmpleasant truth about the leading spokes- 
man of its tiwn side or sect ; but they do not even tell the 
tiuth about their oj^jjonents. The habit of falsehood has 
become so ingrained that the journahst refrains from accurate 
description quite mechanically and unconsciously even where, 
in conversation, he betrays an almost embarrassing gift for 
seeing things clearly. The public knows literallv nothing 
about politicians, and it is not to blame. P"or it has read daily 
repoits of proceedings which treat all of them as sensible and 
public-spirited (if sometimes misguided) jjersons and man\- 
of them as resplendent orators and profound thinkers. A coni- 
pletely veracious account of H, parliamentary debate might 
open thus : 
The motion was nio\ed by Colonel Jigg -Mthough he read 
his speech from a carefully t>-pewritten document, he lost his 
way so frequently tliat he was several times incoherent. At 
these places he went red and rubbed his bald head with a 
handkerchief, and a few titters were heard. His seconder, 
Mr. I'illycoddy, no one tcK)k seriously. This member is a clean- 
shaven snub-nosetl man. who dresses a little too showily for 
a gentleman ; everybody knew him to care nothing whatever 
for the subject of the debate, which merely offered him one 
more opportunity for advancing to the Solicitor-Generalship 
which will pay his own and his wife's debts. Mr. Blink, 
a tall emaciated man with a high forehead and pince-nez, is 
undeniably sincere, though rather a prig and completely 
devoid of humour : his speech, though dull to distraction, 
was confidently delivered and contained well-arranged 
statistics which, far as they went, carried conviction. .After 
the egregious Sir Isaac Midsummer had contributed his usual 
inane jests, Mr. Gullet rose from the Opposition Front Bench 
and, obviously by arrangement with the people opjiosite, 
though his air of solemn hesitation was perfectlv assumed, 
\veighe<l pros and cons until finally suggesting that on the 
whole the question ought not to have been raised just now. 
Mr. Crullet, until he began eating too much, was a good 
speaker of the argumentative type ; he is now notoriouslv 
lazy and contents himself with cliches which he has by heart 
in whole paragraphs. Two younger sons of rich men (who 
were warmly applauded) having made painfully-prepared 
debuts, and an honest, if shaggy, enthusiast, having spoken 
on the other side, the Chancellor of the Duchy of iiuckiug- 
liam (all of whose relatives are in the industry principally 
involved) agreed with the right honourable gentleman opposite, 
and the mover, puzzled to the last, witl(drew his motion. 
We do not want to go as far as this. Common decency prt;- 
vents us from mentioning that a man has eczema or that his 
wife's great-grandfather kept a bad bucket-shop ; but even 
when one has ruled out all the irrelevancies, and even all the 
libels, what a margin there is between the pertinent truth and 
what we are told, between (in fact) the conversation in the 
bar at the Press Gallery and the words that trickle from the 
fountain pens in the writing-rooms adjacent. . 
***** 
How then shall we get the truth which the general conspiracy 
keeps from us ? Mr. Bellpc is not Utopian and has no perfect 
solution. All human beings are faUible and will be to sotne 
extent, and will do those injustice to whom they are opposed. 
Mr. Belloc 's " free " papers are not exempt. But they have 
this thing in common : that they tell truths not told 
elsewhere and have done something to redress the balance of 
speech which was upset when one small class of people with 
one kind of interest got a monopoly of a kind which enabled 
them to howl their particular " news " and views through 
megaphones to the whole population. An extension of the 
Eree Press and a growth of its' power is to be desired. But 
if it is to do more than exercise the slow indirect influence it 
now possesses, it will have to have more money. What are 
wanted are political papers with a guaranteed supply of money, 
vet free from the control of those who own the money, papers 
endowed, and then cut loose, with staffs as fixed as College 
dons, self-governing and free from the fear of starvation. The 
first rich man who puts down a large sum in that way *will 
have really demonstrated his public spirit : he will also, 
incidentally, if he chooses his men properly, get some fun for 
his money. 
