TOPICS OF THE DAY.
PRESS COMBINATIONS.
THE public mind has been greatly perturbed by the purchase of Sir Edward Hulton's group of news- papers. The transfer of these newspapers from one proprietor to another would not, by itself, have caused public anxiety ; what has made everybody talk about the matter is the fact that the Hulton papers have passed into the hands of two great, and apparently growing, newspaper pluralists—Lord Rothermere and Lord Beaverbrook.
That the area of free competition in newspapers should thus be so greatly reduced and the power of the syndicated Press be, apparently, so greatly increased, is, unquestionably, a subject of regret. Instinctively— and this is a very good sign and probably points to the ultimate remedy—the mass of newspaper readers dislike the idea of their daily ration of news passing under the control of one or two men. They like competition because they know it secures them that freedom of choice which they desire. The reader likes to feel he can, if he so desires, go elsewhere. But we are approaching the point when to go elsewhere means finding the same newspaper under an alias ! - It may be said that this is a matter which will soon cure itself. No newspaper can long afford to offend its readers, and so the subjection of the reader to his news- paper is, in fact, illusory. Unfortunately, this view of the situation does not represent the present facts. When newspapers were merely, or, at any rate, chiefly, traders in news, the reader was the all-important person. Now, however, newspapers, though they, of course, still want bigger circulations, want more, and think more about, advertisements. When once they have secured, by various devices, the vast body of readers which is the sine qua non of their existence, they do not worry about the loss of some five or six thousand readers. That is not half so serious a matter as the failure to get the lion's share in the appropriation for advertisement made by :Messrs. Tear and Ravel, the popular dressmakers. When a newspaper can get £1,000 for one of its adver- tisement pages for one day, and would suffer no per- ceptible loss of revenue through the temporary dropping of 5,000 readers, it is hardly to be wondered at that aec-ertisements occupy the position of the predominant partner. The fact is that the popular daily paper of to-day is, in the last resort, a huge trade catalogue in which the news, a serial and a certain :amount of literary matter, all collected and presented regardless of cost, are given almost gratis to the public on condition that they will allow " the accompanying advertisements " to be set before them at their breakfast tables or on their way to work in train, tram or 'bus. The effect of this arrangement, and of the resulting supply of so much expensive news and so much reading matter very cheaply, is that the reader instinctively feels that he cannot rebel. He knows himself to be one of a million and knows that his penny a day is of very little account. Therefore he either forgets all about it, or else adopts a mood of " sombre acquiescence " in his grievance.
Though the movement towards the trade-catalogue newspaper has had so bad an effect on the reader's posi- tion, and has, as it were, .bribed him into submitting to the loss of his former control, there is a still stronger influence at work to deprive the reader of his influence over what he reads. Newspapers are more and more passing into the hands of millionaires—of men, at least, who are so rich either from the multitude and importance of their jour- calistit ventures, or from their great outside interests, that their preoccupation is not to sell their papers, but to influence public opinion in a particular way—be that way political, financial, or social. Croesus has found out that power, that unstable, illusory, and yet all-compelling quality, is to he found quite as much in paper as in gold, or iron, or brass, or oil. He buys newspapers, and will run them even at a loss because either they give him power directly, or else they give it indirectly through the poll: ticians or the business men who, will exchange influence in the things they control—i.e., seats in Parliament, Peerages, Honours, and Policies, advertisements, mate- rials of production or financial facilities—against the influence wielded by the proprietors of newspapers.
Again, it is not too much to say that the up-to-date millionaire feels almost as much " out of it " if he controls no newspaper as he would feel if he were without a Rolls- Royce, or a collection of the latest " fancy " in pictures, china, drawings, or furniture. Press influence is, in fact, a precious luxury to the millionaire. Press reactions are very quick, and the man who wants to make a new or old play boom, to increase the vogue of a painter to whom he has taken a fancy, to " bring on " a young politician whom he wishes to patronize, or to " down " a statesman who has repelled his advances in the matter of a peerage or a pet political scheme, is pleased to watch the effect of a paragraph or two thrown by his order into the human ant-heap. If he has anything of the mischief-maker in him, he finds it amusing to watch the insects scurrying about in disordered perturbation ! In former times the newspaper proprietor, even if his paper was a source of great wealth, did not like to offend readers by such freakishness. That consideration does not deter the man half of whose wealth comes from elsewhere, and who at any rate feels that, as long as his advertisement contracts are going up and enabling him to pay large sums for clever people to tickle the popular palate, the loss of even 10,000 serious readers need not worry him.
We cannot say exactly how and where the remedy will come, but come it will. One way, curiously enough, will be through the good type of rich men, of whom, though it is not a popular view just now, we venture to say there are plenty. As has been proved, by the example of Major Astor, the chief and controlling pro- prietor of the Times, there are means of meeting syndica- tion by stabilization. These means have been adopted and are being developed by Major Astor, and through them the Times will be insured against falling into the hands of any combination such as those which now dominate a large part of the newspaper world. The Times will remain the independent paper it now is—the paper which makes it its supreme business to sell its readers not only the news, and the whole news, but also sincere comment on that news. There are other de- velopments, which will mitigate the evils of syndication. It may turn out, for example, that broadcasting will act as a corrective of a real Press monopoly if this should ever be attempted. Again, we may be on the edge of some revolutionary development in the matter of newspaper production.
An historian of the Roman Empire, when he had described the inertia caused by the monopoly of power enjoyed by the later Roman Emperors, and had dwelt upon the tideless and stormless sea that lapped the footstool of the throne of the Caesars, went on to predict how this monopoly would end. All the time the man who was to overthrow the placid tyrant was " creeping round the base of the Alps " with the fatal dagger in his girdle. So there may be at this very moment in London some eager young man with a mechanical invention in his pocket which will free the Press and its readers from the dread shadow of a universal syndication.
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