Title: The "Free Press": portrait of a monopoly
Author: Marion, George
Language: English
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A MONOPOLY ***



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                            THE “FREE PRESS”

                         PORTRAIT OF A MONOPOLY

                            By GEORGE MARION


                   NEW CENTURY PUBLISHERS: _New York_



 _Published by_ NEW CENTURY PUBLISHERS, 832 Broadway, New York 3, N. Y.

          June, 1946          209          PRINTED IN U.S.A.



CONTENTS


    PART I: PORTRAIT OF A MONOPOLY

        I. It’s Free--For Millionaires!                      5

       II. For Whom The Press Toils                         11

      III. Words For Sale                                   15


    PART II: NEWS--ARM OF EMPIRE

       IV. The Rover Newsboys Abroad                        22

        V. Secret History of a Cartel                       28

       VI. Responsibility--A Challenge To the Press         42



About the Author


George Marion, the author of this pamphlet, was born and raised in
the Middle West. A member of the Newspaper Guild (C.I.O.), he got his
education in “free” journalism at first hand. His experience covers
work in every department of news manufacturing, the modern process by
which “marketable words and images” are produced. He is a veteran war
correspondent and roving reporter, and his news background includes
a period with the defunct semi-official French news agency, Havas;
free-lancing in Europe, North Africa, and India; and front-line
reporting of the historic conflict in Spain of the 1935–37 years,
Hitler’s “dress rehearsal” for World War II. When this pamphlet went to
press, he was on the staff of the New York _Mirror_.



THE “FREE PRESS”

By GEORGE MARION



Part I: Portrait of a Monopoly



_Chapter I_

IT’S FREE--FOR MILLIONAIRES!


Brooks Atkinson filed a peevish dispatch to the _New York Times_
from his Moscow post not long ago. Atkinson, ex-dramatic critic, is
a highly-civilized, able and honest correspondent whose reports from
China and the Soviet Union have shown a certain respect for people
as people. His cablegrams are often touched with humor. All the more
striking was the humorless dispatch in which he complained:

  The Soviet Union goes on coldly repeating Marxian myths about
  America--that we have no freedom of the press, that our democracy
  is formal but not real. Only the other day the Moscow _Bolshevik_
  was saying:

  In the conditions of bourgeois democracy the workers do not have
  the minimum material requirements for actual use of the rights that
  are proclaimed. They do not have at their disposal printing presses
  and paper. Newspapers, clubs, theatres--all are the property of
  private individuals or groups.

Atkinson sneered: “If these old myths are not deliberately false then
they are products of the lack of a basic understanding.”

There is no doubt that the Constitution of the United States formally
guarantees to anyone the right to publish a newspaper in our country.
The law is just and equal, forbidding unemployed worker and millionaire
alike to sleep on park benches, guaranteeing either the freedom to buy
or establish the huge enterprise called a newspaper. But where does
Mr. Atkinson think a working man can obtain the _means_ to publish and
widely circulate a daily newspaper?

The entire labor movement has been unable to maintain a single daily
newspaper comparable in physical facilities and size of circulation to
the average privately-owned newspaper. Publication of a daily requires
a starting sum beyond the present reach of working people. Oswald
Garrison Villard, proud of his family’s 125 years in the publishing
field, says that “no one would dream of starting a metropolitan
newspaper with less than ten or even fifteen millions in the bank.”
The newest modern presses alone run into the millions. The physical
plant of the _New York Daily News_, occupied in 1930, was then worth
$10,000,000. A few bad years while a paper is getting on its feet may
cost millions more.


Ask Marshall Field

Enough capital to start a paper is only the beginning. Marshall Field,
who inherited $164,000,000, found that all his millions could buy him
only a curiously limited area of press freedom. His _Chicago Sun_, set
up to combat the ultra-reactionary _Chicago Tribune_, had to fight
for its very life--all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. Field’s
conclusion as the result of his own experience is that it is easier to
buy an established daily newspaper than to launch a new one.

Do you want to buy a newspaper? There is probably not a daily in
America that can be bought for less than $2,000,000! The _Philadelphia
Inquirer_ was sold in 1930 for a reported $18,000,000. The _New York
Times_ has no price. It boasted a gross annual business of $20,000,000
as much as twenty-five years ago. Since then, the bulk of its
constantly mounting profits has been ploughed back into the business
year after year until the paper, considered purely as a business,
represents a fabulous investment. Naturally, money will not buy it.

Very well, you can’t buy a paper. Try to establish a new one. Field
found out what that meant. The local news-gathering service, in
Chicago, was barred to him. He had to set up his own reportorial staff
on a scale to overcome this handicap. But for national and worldwide
news, no such solution was possible. Not even _his_ fortune could
finance an adequate global news service.

There are only three such American news agencies, Associated Press,
United Press and International News Service. Associated Press is a
professedly “cooperative” membership association embracing some 1,300
of America’s 1,744 English-language dailies. United Press, controlled
by Roy Howard, is based on his newspaper chain. I.N.S. rests on the
Hearst chain. Major newspapers try to have as many of these services as
they can get. The Howard-owned papers, for instance, are by no means
content with their own U.P. service, but seek also the A.P. “report.”
The Hearst papers never operate with I.N.S. alone; almost all have
A.P. franchises and several boast that they alone, in their respective
areas, have all three services. For a variety of reasons, however, A.P.
is the decisive agency. It is rather hopeless to try to compete with a
major paper on the basis of U.P. or I.N.S. service.

Field could not get A.P. The by-laws of the “cooperative” permitted
the _Chicago Tribune_ to blackball his application for membership. He
could not get I.N.S. because it is available only to the Hearst paper
in Chicago, the _Herald-American_. He had no choice but to publish on
the basis of United Press service only. That cost him $110,000 in 1942
against an estimated $50,000 he would have paid for the superior A.P.
report.


Regimentation

News agency coverage was only the beginning of the problem. Look at
your daily newspaper, wherever you live. It is the same paper as
the one I read. There is, in effect, only one American newspaper,
or let us say three or four papers which are parts of one pattern.
Your paper and mine print exactly the same news, the same pictures,
the same columnists, the same features ranging from comics through
recipes, and often the same canned editorials supplied by the Newspaper
Enterprise Association. Moreover, these canned features, together
with new mechanical inventions, make for standardized typography and
appearance. Even grammatical style, width of column, size of type, must
be uniform. The standardization reaches its ridiculous peak in the
Hearst papers where “The Chief,” octogenarian William Randolph Hearst,
dictates by teletype the manner and form in which his “publishers” must
display many important items.

There is no escaping this regimentation. If you want readers, you must
meet the competition. Field had to have features, pictures and so on.
He struggled to create his own comics and after three years felt he had
achieved some readable ones, though by no means as successful as those
controlled by the rival press. But news pictures can’t be invented.
Without photographs, successful newspaper publication is impossible.
Pictures, however, are as tightly controlled as news services. Even the
Communist _Daily Worker_, the outstanding labor daily newspaper in the
country, has to buy from the syndicates as they are. Field couldn’t buy
any!

Associated Press owns A.P. Wirephotos and the Wideworld newsphoto
service. The _Tribune_ barred sale of these pictures to Field. Acme,
the Howard-dominated picture service, was likewise denied him through
an “exclusive contract” between Acme and the _Tribune_. Hearst’s
International News Photos were not available in Chicago because they
went to the _Herald-American_.

In 1942 Field spent $63,000 on pictures and $425,000 to maintain
news bureaus and other items, an outlay due chiefly to the monopoly
conditions he faced--which anyone who wants to publish must face. A
smaller capitalist would have been licked at that point, but Field had
sufficient power to launch anti-trust proceedings against Associated
Press as a means of breaking out of the encirclement.

The United States Supreme Court sustained Field. The _Tribune_-A.P.
were forced to let him purchase the A.P. news report. But the court
decision has not made a general break in the monopoly structure. If
one of the major trade union bodies, for instance, wants to publish a
daily newspaper in New York, Chicago, Detroit or Los Angeles, there is
nothing to prevent A.P. and all the other services from declining to
sell their indispensable goods.

There is no use dreaming about building--on however broad a
liberal-labor cooperative plane--an independent apparatus to escape
the news, picture and feature service squeeze. It would cost not
millions but billions. Though the services have acquired an independent
existence and structure, they are basically the American press itself.
The newspapers are not only their market but their major source of
supply. They provide most of the local news and pictures used by the
agencies.


This Is Monopoly

Some idea of the concentration and integration of the American
newspaper industry may be obtained by a glance at Associated Press,
the typical expression of the industry. A.P. has bureaus in 250
world cities, 94 within the U.S. Seven of these have fifty or more
full-time staff members and the whole A.P. domestic payroll covers
7,200 employees, 1,940 on a full-time basis. A.P. also has 2,500
correspondents abroad using a leased transatlantic cable. It has
290,000 miles of leased wires linking 727 American cities. Its daily
general news report alone exceeds 1,000,000 words, single metropolitan
papers taking from 250,000 to 300,000 words a day. There are endless
additional reports. A.P.’s 1942 expenditures totalled $12,986,000.
(United Press spent $8,628,000; I.N.S., $9,434,000.) A.P.’s material
reserves exceed $100,000,000.

But all this describes only the independent structure of Associated
Press. The bulk of the personnel of the American press is also a
part of the A.P. apparatus. Member papers--which means most of the
country’s newspapers and _all the important ones_--must make all their
news available to A.P. and are expected to withhold it from anyone
outside of A.P. Even employees of the papers are similarly bound. Any
news they “spontaneously” acquire belongs to A.P. Thus, instead of a
mere 5,000 to 10,000 employees, A.P. really has some 100,000 persons
working for it every hour of the day and night. It coordinates the
whole news-gathering apparatus of the American press. It does this on
an exclusive basis. It is not only a monopoly but the expression of the
monopolistic organization of the American press.


Pikers Barred

The monopoly structure of the industry plus the size and complexity
of newspaper operation from a business point of view, have made it
impossible for any but multimillionaires to enter the field. As a
logical result, there has been a steady shrinkage of the field--a drop
in the number of dailies from 2,600 in 1909 to 1,744 at the beginning
of 1945.

This shrinkage has been accompanied by a virtual disappearance of
competition in most cities. In 1899, 353 cities were dominated by
a single newspaper. In 1920 there were 720 such cities. In 1945
there were 1,103. In many of the remaining cities, the “competing”
papers were under a single ownership so that the actual number of
cities without competition in 1945 was 1,277. Conversely, there were
549 cities with local competition in 1920 but only 117 in 1945. In
percentages it is still worse. Of all cities having newspapers, only
8.4 per cent had competition in 1945.

Even these figures are flattering to the myth of free and competitive
enterprise. Veiled joint ownership and “gentlemen’s agreements” plus
the spread of the chains and the general standardization process still
further reduce the area of competition and restrict the diversity of
views. Only the half-dozen largest cities in the United States have
dailies with competing views in even the narrowest sense. The 25
largest cities average but three ownerships. _Editor and Publisher_,
organ of the owners, admits the phenomenon and apologizes for it.

  The condition has arisen not by the will of any individual or
  group, but from a gradual growth of custom, both in newspaper
  operation and in the purchase of advertising space.

This refers to the preference of advertisers for fewer papers with
larger circulations. The net effect is that the local monopolies are
barricaded against competition and the price of admission is several
million dollars.



_Chapter II_

FOR WHOM THE PRESS TOILS


If ownership of the press is closed to all but an estimated 1,300
multimillionaire owners, whose opinions appear in it? The obvious
answer is: the opinions of the owners. They make no bones about it.
Canons of ethics sometimes pay lip service to “public interest,” but in
making legal commitments the publishers insist on written guarantees
that their views and nobody else’s shall go into “their” newspapers.
The American Newspaper Guild, for instance, is forced to reacknowledge,
from time to time, its formal acceptance of the publishers’ opinion
monopoly. Newspaper workers claim no right to speak through the pages
of their employers’ papers. From copyboy to top editor, newspapermen
are hired hands, engaged for the sole purpose of putting their
employer’s opinions in print.

Newspapers being a Big Business, the views of newspaper owners are the
views of Big Business. Thousands of specific instances of unmitigated
partisanship have been assembled and documented by George Seldes in his
several books and in his weekly newsletter, _In Fact_. Former Secretary
of the Interior Harold Ickes and others have also written books and
articles primarily devoted to this theme. One has only to observe the
handling of the recent wage crisis by the press. It stacked the cards
against labor, playing up the strikes and playing down capital’s bold
blackmail drive for higher prices and weaker unions.

The press is, in fact, an important part of the State apparatus. It
plays a key role in maintaining the rule of the Sixty Families over the
140,000,000 people of the United States. It is a tool in the hands of
the few finance capitalists who remain all-powerful so long as they are
able to keep the masses divided and confused.

It is true that the press lords are forever wailing about an alleged
government menace to press freedom. The conflict of press and
government does not contradict, however, the charge that the press
is an instrument of the State. The common notion that State and
government are two names for one thing, makes a few words on theory
advisable at this point. A hundred or a hundred and fifty years
ago, there would have been less likelihood of similar confusion. In
the great political strife that attended and immediately followed
the adoption of the United States Constitution, political theory
was treated with more respect than it is today. Federalists and
Jeffersonians agreed that the State was an instrument of class rule.
Jeffersonian John Taylor saw revolution and “order” as “two modes of
invading private property; the first, by which the poor plunder the
rich ... sudden and violent; the second, by which the rich plunder the
poor, slow and legal.” Summarizing Taylor’s views, historian Arthur
Schlesinger, Jr. says: “The succession of privileged orders through
history--the priesthood, the nobility, now the banking system--showed
how every age had known its own form of institutionalized robbery
by a minority operating through the State.” Lenin later put it
scientifically: “The State is an organ of class domination, an organ of
oppression of one class by another; its aim is the creation of ‘order’
which legalizes and perpetuates this oppression.”


The American State

Classes do not march in a straight line to their goals. Sometimes
the executive arm of government is completely responsive to the
views of the most reactionary section of capitalism, as when Hoover,
Harding, Coolidge were President. Sometimes the President is not fully
“manageable,” as in the case of President Roosevelt. But he then finds
himself pretty well invested by “trustworthy” men; he must accept a
John Garner for Vice-President; he must put men like Jesse Jones in his
Cabinet. In the same way, Congress may be an easy tool of reactionary
interests one term, curbed by public pressure the next. Note the speed
with which the last few Congresses have enacted drastic anti-labor
legislation and tax bills pouring billions into the coffers of Big
Business. If an active public conscience restricts the freedom of
executive departments and legislative departments otherwise favorable
to Big Business, there are always the courts. When the democrats,
Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, held the presidency, Martin Van Buren noted
that the party of rich-man’s-rule fled to “the judicial department of
the government, as to an ark of future safety which the Constitution
placed beyond the reach of public opinion.” So today the courts readily
grant anti-picketing injunctions to employers despite laws expressly
designed to halt such use of the injunction. Below the Federal level,
government is even more easily dominated by big capital. The local
police are always at hand for strike duty. Governors and mayors dance
to Big Business tunes.

Beyond all these departments of government are other tools at the
service of the ruling class to help it maintain political dominance,
regiment public opinion, terrorize and repress dissenters, employ and
reward servants and agents of all kinds, to the end of constantly
increasing its profits, intensifying its exploitation of the population
and extending its enormous powers. Schools, churches, theaters are
manipulated by boards directly selected by leading capitalists.
The Morgans and Rockefellers personally oversee, as trustees, the
largest universities, public libraries and museums. Radio, moving
pictures, and the press--frankly described by their private owners as
“opinion-forming industries”--are even more elaborately controlled
devices for class rule.

Of all these, the press is the most powerful single force in our
time. The United States maintains a public-opinion-forming apparatus
unparalleled in history and unequalled in any other land for the sheer
weight of “information” hurled at a defenseless public. There is no
chance for the public to make up its own mind.


Private Power

The newspaper owners have virtually unlimited control of this apparatus
despite their elaborate pretense of suffering government constraint.
The outcry against the government is a complete fraud. The owners are
simply demanding a monopoly power over public opinion. They go so far
as to impose a virtual censorship on an Administration with which they
are not in complete sympathy. They got Congress to pass an act frankly
designed to suppress Marshall Field’s pro-Roosevelt newspapers. If you
so much as criticize the opinion-monopoly, you are accused of attacking
freedom of the press. The monopolists have bulldozed the politicians
until no less bold a critic than Mr. Ickes has gone on record as
opposing publication of even a single government newspaper.

_Yet the very idea of government as the chief enemy of press freedom
is a fraud on history._ Long before the rise of modern industry, when
printing was invented, the feudal ruling classes were indeed opposed
to the spread of information among the dark masses. They objected not
only to newspapers but even to the printing and distribution of the
Bible. Not the content of the printed matter but the general increase
of knowledge and understanding was the point at issue. The greater the
ignorance of the people, the less danger to their rule.

Modern industry, however, requires millions of literate workers.
The general level of education and information must rise. The new
ruling classes, the merchant princes, the industrialists, the finance
capitalists, are forced to accede to this trend. Their attitude toward
the press changes. Instead of seeking to limit the volume of newspaper
information, they seek to control the content and use the papers as
a tool. The deliberate spread of misinformation and class propaganda
replaces the tactic of suppression. Neither government, nor the ruling
classes who dominate the government, try to restrict this outpouring.
That was a problem in the age of feudalism; the true problem today is
that the press is monopolized by a wealthy and powerful clique. It has
become one of the most powerful instruments of the capitalist State, on
a par with the government itself!

“The use as well as the misuse of information has made the power of
suggestion the decisive force in world affairs,” says Dean Ackerman of
the Columbia School of Journalism, a pillar of the news industry. “It
can cause or prevent war. It can strengthen or destroy a democracy. It
can build or wreck a nation.”



_Chapter III_

WORDS FOR SALE


Class control of the press does not mean simple operation in the
interests of capitalist newspaper owners. The owners are kept in line
by the class as a whole so that they protect the interests of Big
Business, and express the views of capital in general, rather than
merely personal views.

The pressure of advertisers, the family connections of the publisher
and so on, do not fully explain the capitalist owner’s loyalty to his
class. There is a deeper reason. The class function is so thoroughly
built into the structure of the American newspaper industry that even
millionaire mavericks, Marshall Fields, can stray but slightly from the
class corral. The publishers themselves are powerless to change the
over-all character of the press as the voice of finance capital.

The “built-in” class control of the press did not come about through a
convention or secret meeting of machiavellian bankers, nor even through
the constant pressure of the National Association of Manufacturers.
It came about in a way no one could have planned. It was a historical
process of a complicated kind. The best thing we can do is to
study the process and the resulting structure of the press without
oversimplifying.


Subsidies

Even before the War of Independence, the American press lived on
subsidies. Our holier-than-thou “free” publishers love to point
scornfully at the subsidies paid their “un-free” European rivals.
These they call “bribes” to spread national propaganda. The American
publisher can see the mote in his brother’s eye but not the beam in
his own. For political parties, the government and private interests
have at various times subsidized our papers--and still do. There is
no secret about it. Any competent study of the business--_The Daily
Newspaper in America_, by A. M. Lee, for instance--has the detailed
story.

The United States government subsidizes the press by means of special
mailing privileges. Postal rates for newspapers at newspapers. What
price subsidy? In 1908, 64 per cent of all mail (by weight) was
newspapers; it brought the Post Office but 4 per cent of its revenues.
The press, for all its cries of rage at “government extravagance,”
insists on continuance of this patronage. The welcomed “handout” costs
taxpayers from $25,000,000 to $10,000,000 a year, it is estimated.

Second-class mailing privileges and the like are only a minor factor in
the subsidy system. Preferential wire rates for news is the big thing.
Billions of news-words transmitted each year ordinarily get their low
rates from private companies owning the telephone, telegraph, wireless,
radio, cable and other facilities. But all communications are matters
of public franchise and the preferential rates were the result of State
intervention.

The recently published _Report From the Commission on Freedom of the
Press_ further reveals how government directly intervenes by creating
communications. During World War II the armed services tripled
telecommunications mileage and fabulously multiplied capacity. Against
a pre-war private cable-wireless capacity of 12,500,000 words a day,
“the service networks have done as much as 50,000,000 words per day.”
The new State-created communications include marvelous technological
advances such as multiple-address newscasting, simultaneous
broadcasting of several messages through the same microphone, and
facsimile newscasting.

Where the State creates and controls communications, subsidizing them,
is it not nonsense to speak of the press--the communications-based news
industry--as independent of the State?


What Is News?

Still more deeply hidden is a curious twist in the character of news
itself. What is news? A well-worn “gag” accurately describes the
publishing industry’s concept. “If a man bites a dog, that’s news.”
There is nothing unexpected, nothing unusual, nothing _sensational_
about a dog biting a man; hence, that isn’t news. In short, an accurate
picture of what is happening is not news. News is a name for unrelated,
torn-from-context events or incidents of a sensational character.

Man-bites-dog may be a gag but it is no joke. It contains the link
between the obvious faults of our press and their hidden disease. The
techniques by which American newspapers turn events into profit are
all an expression of the man-bites-dog idea. The compulsory use of the
“lead” and headline (with the consequent development of the “headline
mentality” decried by the late President Roosevelt), is merely the
final expression of the technical process. The whole process consists
in finding or creating sensations to exploit. The object being to
sell papers, not to maintain just values, “news” is not that which
informs but that which sells another newspaper to a badgered reader.
Not only complicated international affairs but even “local” stories
are distorted beyond recognition of the facts by these techniques. The
“crime waves” cooked up out of quite average statistics from time to
time are a sample (whatever further reactionary ends they may serve).

The preoccupation with selling papers against fierce competition
leads to the American practice of an edition every thirty seconds.
This mania for speed, plus the man-bites-dog news formula, works to
corrupt and discourage the men who handle news. At length, even the
boasted accuracy of the press about elementary facts becomes a myth
and a fraud. “The reliability of news accounts is far below what it
was years ago ... the reporter is trained to look for the bizarre as
all-important ...” writes Oswald Garrison Villard in _The Disappearing
Daily_. Anyone who has ever figured in a news story knows that the
printed “facts” have little to do with reality!


True and Unbiased News

News was not always limited to this formula of sensation. The telegraph
changed the whole basis of newspaper production and sale. It compelled
papers to carry a picture of the whole country and ultimately the whole
world whereas they used to be little more than local bulletins. Costs
greatly increased, and to defray them publishers formed pools. Thus the
modern news agency was born and with the agency came a standardized
manner of treating news.

When the first agencies began operating, newspapers were very violent
in their opinions and intemperate in expressing them. If a news agency
wanted to serve all, it would have to find a way of reporting what
would offend none. At first, transmission of a limited kind of news was
undertaken: deaths, fires, market prices, textual matter. To cover the
whole range of news, however, the agency had to learn how to report
controversial matters that all the papers wanted, in a way acceptable
to all. For instance, it must report a political contest in a form
printable by papers backing either major party. The news agencies
learned to do that just 100 years ago.

This reporting formula is what the American news industry calls “true
and unbiased news.” It is regarded as something holy. A more than
religious fervor marks the industry’s references to it. Kent Cooper,
executive director of A.P., admits that it was not “the result of
philosophic study or prayer,” but he is proud that A.P. puts “into
forceful and lasting effect the moral concept that necessity had
invented.” He further calls it the “greatest moral concept ever
developed in America and given to the world.”

A second’s thought is enough to reveal that there is nothing “moral”
about the concept at all. The successful agency formula does not
require “truth.” It requires only the transmission of views or “facts”
acceptable and useful to _all capitalist newspaper owners_. It does not
eliminate bias. _It merely eliminates differences between individual
publishers and reduces reporting to the common bias of owners as a
group._ This formula for standardized treatment of events and opinions
is completely devoid of moral content. It has melted all varieties of
information, all events and interrelations, down to one kind of easily
sold and exchanged piece of goods: the commodity, news.

Though United Press is today as pompous as A.P. about the supposed
“objectivity” of American agency “news,” Roy Howard was franker when
he was fighting an uphill battle for U.P.’s life. He then complained
bitterly of A.P.’s monopolistic practices in “collecting and selling
a basic journalistic commodity--news--in a highly competitive field.”
He also said: “I do not subscribe to the general idea that news and
opinion are two different and easily separated elements.” Consider
news about Negroes, for instance, as handled by the agencies. Most of
it emanates from Southern newspapers with avowed lily-white views; it
is for distribution to all subscribers but must not “offend” the large
bloc of Southern papers. So it is all bias and a continent wide.

Oddly enough, labor journalism had to solve the same problem that led
the capitalist agencies to their news formula. The American Federation
of Labor established Federated Press in 1919 to serve the labor press,
chiefly weekly and monthly membership journals. The labor movement was
and is rent by factions; jurisdictional feuds are topped by the present
division of labor into the A. F. of L. and C.I.O. camps. Yet Federated
Press has always been able to supply news acceptable to warring
factions and rival unions. The agency never pretended, however, that it
was non-partisan in a larger sense. F.P. Chief Carl Haessler said:

  The management of the Federated Press has never subscribed to the
  hypocritical assertion of the capitalist newspapers that news can
  be without bias. The Federated Press is very careful about facts
  but they are presented with a decidedly pro-labor interpretation
  just as we believe the capitalist press interprets news so that it
  becomes pro-capitalist.


Remote Control

Incidentally, a comparison of the Federated Press budget with that of
the capitalist agencies casts some light on the difference between real
and formal equality. Federated Press spent $18,000 in 1936. The three
employer-minded agencies spent $31,048,000 in a similar 12-month period
(1942)!

Linked to sensationalism, the commodity form of news destroyed the
old profession of journalism and replaced it with pure business. The
individual honest reporter or correspondent, however pure his intent,
is sunk from the start. The _form_ of news he is taught to seek and
permitted to send is hostile to the nature of truth. Not only the
reporter, but the newspaper owner himself is alienated from the process
of gathering reliable information and printing it. He is a merchant
bound up with the problems of purchase and sale of goods, circulation,
advertising and the like.

The _Report on Freedom of the Press_ takes for granted the
merchandising realities. It speaks constantly of “marketable words
and images” rather than “news.” No wonder! The contents of newspapers
are standard goods manufactured in distant news agencies, syndicates,
canned-editorial factories. Development of 4-color facsimile processes
by 800-word-per-minute wireless transmission, plus air-express of
films, mats and plates, accentuates a trend. Simultaneous publication
on five continents of a whole magazine, forty-eight hours after the
material is written in a central editorial office anywhere, is now
possible. But newspapers are already, in effect, edited at the central
headquarters of banking and industry. And thus the boasted “free press”
of America has become a simon-pure example of Big Business, absolute,
brutal monopoly.


The Fascist “Fringe”

The increasingly monopolistic character of the press has made its
control by Big Business an automatic process. But it has had still
another result: to put the press under the influence of the most
reactionary, least responsible wing of Big Business. The direct agency
of this influence is the more openly pro-fascist section of the
press. Unfortunately, progressives cling to the illusion that this
section of the press is a sort of fanatical “fringe,” ill-regarded
in the trade. That is an illusion, a dangerous one. This so-called
“fringe” section comprises the chains owned by Hearst, Roy Howard and
Patterson-McCormick. Their combined direct circulation, according to
the Editor and Publisher Yearbook for 1944, was 9,649,108 daily and
13,578,687 Sunday, roughly a quarter of all newspaper circulation.
Moreover, the readers of newspapers subscribing to the Hearst
International News Service, which carries the Hearst political line in
full, should be added to the direct circulation figures. A tabulation
from the 1944 Yearbook shows I.N.S. was sold to 290 daily and 104
Sunday papers in 220 cities and towns of 38 states. Total circulation
of I.N.S.-subscribing papers was 15,827,856. This figure, plus the
circulation of the papers in the three chains (after eliminating
duplications) gives 22,043,146 as the actual audience of the three
chainsters--half the national circulation!

It is only the beginning. They also own all the important feature
syndicates and the two private news agencies, U.P. and I.N.S. They
control most of the columnists, more powerful than the editorial pages.
(Westbrook Pegler alone is said to have 10,000,000 circulation.) Their
competition and methods exert a direct influence on rival papers and on
Associated Press, aside from their many memberships in A.P. (one for
each member paper). Their papers dominate circulation in such key areas
as New York, Chicago and Washington.

But there is still more. Decisive is this fact: they form, in effect, a
single political bloc. The power of the bloc begins with its material
foundation, as described above. Here the new factor enters. The
three chains are not just important units in the highly profitable
merchandising enterprise called the newspaper industry. They are active
and conscious political forces. They have a program. They utilize
their papers and personnel for active organization of reactionary
movements and drives. They are not only available to such characters
as Representative Rankin and Senator Bilbo; they not only feature the
hate-speeches of such men: they write the speeches and inspire their
delivery. They instigate fascist activities. Goering and Rosenberg did
not have to seek Hearst out and bribe him to print their Nazi ravings
under their own by-lines: _he sought them out!_

It was war-long support by this bloc that prepared MacArthur’s
dictatorship of the Pacific today. It was their persistent slandering
of the Soviet Union throughout the war that prepared the general
hysteria of the press immediately the war had ended. The mere fact of
their operation as a bloc, would assure their dominance over the press
as a whole unless there were an equally powerful counterbloc. But
there is as yet no effective counterbloc--this is one of the primary
tasks still to be tackled by labor and the people. For the reactionary
program of the pro-fascist bloc is but the unrestrained expression
of Big Business’ inner drives. It is but the crude utterance of the
prejudices hidden by more cultured newspaper owners. It is the open
sore that betrays the hidden disease of our unfree-press: complete
subservience to the private interests of the biggest monopolies.



Part II: News--Arm of Empire



_Chapter IV_

THE ROVER NEWSBOYS ABROAD

“I want the people of every land to be as fully informed as we are,
through a press of varied inclinations toward the philosophies of the
day.”--Kent Cooper.


What the American press is at home--an arm of the State--it is abroad.
The press, and the forces behind it, have formulated an aggressive
program for pushing American commodity news into every corner of the
earth. The program is put in the form of a demand for adoption of
“freedom of the press as we know it” by all nations. The President,
the State Department, the Congress have formally adopted the news
industry’s program as a basic unit in American foreign policy.

The first major action of the United Nations Commission on Human
Rights was to set up a subcommittee on the “free press,” to consider
a resolution along American lines. There was strong pressure to adopt
the American view in its entirety. The U.S. has also insisted that many
foreign countries accept American correspondents and adopt American
news concepts if they want diplomatic recognition.

Speaking for the American newspaper industry, Kent Cooper has further
proposed that no country should obtain aid of any kind from the U.S.
without acceptance of these views. Official backing of Cooper has
gone so far that Congress even delayed a United Nations Relief and
Rehabilitation Agency appropriation in an attempt to impose a “free
press” condition for U.N.R.R.A. aid.

As a matter of fact, the wedding of press and State has carried the
“free press” demand far beyond the limits of news policy, no matter how
you define the latter. A privileged status is being demanded for the
news industry, as witness Cooper’s suggestion that correspondents be
given _diplomatic immunity_! But the matter is far from stopping there.

It is not generally known that the American news industry has now
attained virtual domination of the world news market--which means every
country except the Soviet Union and its immediate neighbors. The story
of the battle for world opinion control will be told in later pages.
Here it is enough to point out that official pressure for world news
“freedom” has a double purpose. First, it is aimed to break down Soviet
resistance, especially in respect to reported plans of Tass, official
Soviet news agency, to serve Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria,
Austria, Hungary and Rumania. Second, it is designed to further expand
and consolidate the powerful world position of the American news
monopoly against future challenges by its now feeble rivals.

In such a program, news is a naked arm of Empire. It cannot be
separated from the territorial, military-strategic, economic and
political aspects of American foreign policy. The increasingly
imperialistic tone of that policy, the spread-eagle drive for absolute
world power, is more and more reflected in the demands of the news
industry. Thus, Arthur Hays Sulzberger, publisher of the banker-minded
_New York Times_, frankly states the connection between the two. In a
speech containing the crude threat of atomic bombs and the flavor of
political blackmail, he declared:

  I do not believe that free peoples can afford to trust
  dictatorships. We should not share our military secrets, or make
  any financial agreements, calculated to build the Soviet Union
  until we in this country have more knowledge of her and her
  ways.... I think we should put definite limits upon our cooperation
  ... until we have the same freedom of access to the news of Russia
  as they have to the news over here....

  Access to the news is, therefore, my condition for full cooperation
  and I should hold to that position uncompromisingly. The
  elimination of censorship would be but a small part of compliance
  with this condition. _Access to the news means freedom to travel
  at will--to talk with whomsoever one wishes--it means finding
  communications systems available--it means the right of a business
  man to see how his product is used or whether a market for it
  exists.... I say this as a newspaper man, it is true, but in this
  all-important freedom we in the newspaper profession act as your
  agents._

What Sulzberger and the news industry are demanding, is acceptance
by the Soviet Union of the system of special privileges for private
enterprise that prevails here. At the very least, they would require
the Russians to agree that information is a commodity to be peddled
exclusively by morally irresponsible private organizations. If the
Soviet Union could be forced to bow to American private enterprise
in this instance, a capitalist wedge would have been inserted in the
Socialist system.


Lawful Spies

Any newspaperman who has worked abroad, or among foreign correspondents
here, knows that there is the closest connection between the work of
a correspondent and the interests of the State. Walter Lippmann, in
criticizing Congress for the attempted U.N.R.R.A. holdup, pointed out
that virtually all of a correspondent’s news comes from officials and
business men of his own country, plus some friendly foreign diplomatic
sources. There is no clear line separating the correspondent from
the Embassy officials of his country. There is even less sharp a
distinction between the _information_ exchanged by the correspondent
with Embassy officials and the “_intelligence_” supplied by agents and
outright spies.

The recent Pearl Harbor inquiry dented the old shallow idea of
“intelligence” which centered on beautiful Mata Haris and stolen
plans, though the recent Canadian spy-scare exploited this popular
misconception. The United States has just created a new national
intelligence agency on a more realistic basis. Gathering of every
kind of public and secret information, plus the over-all evaluation
of the total information, is the job of the new agency. Evaluation of
information at every stage is essential. Poor evaluation led General
Marshall to believe--and to tell a press conference--that the Nazis
would go through the Red Army like a hot knife through butter; later
that Japan was militarily a joke.

For the function of gathering information and evaluating it as it is
gathered, the correspondent is ideally equipped. Since his work is
conditioned to the objectives of the dominant interests in his own
country, and even of his own government to varying degrees, he cannot
be regarded as an innocent man from Mars, dispassionately reporting
history as it unfolds. As a matter of fact, news values are determined,
for the correspondent, with relation to state policy. Events are
not “news” unless they have some bearing on the progress or lack of
progress of specific American policies. The current American coverage
of the Balkans is typical. Correspondence from that area is almost
exclusively concerned with the Anglo-American effort to get “reliable”
governments installed. The correspondent makes no pretense of drawing a
positive picture of life in those lands.

But over and beyond what the correspondent reports, or does not report,
is his value as a contact man. It is not for nothing that Sulzberger
stresses complete freedom of motion and contact for the business
man and correspondent alike. In the Socialist sphere, and in rival
imperialist territory, the American newspaperman is part of a network
of capitalist contacts within the country to which he is assigned. He
is a war correspondent and intelligence agent in peacetime!

This question of contacts is as decisive for the newspaper business as
it is for intelligence work. And it provides an interesting link with
the secret history of the world news cartel. For just such contacts
were the foundation of the global news monopoly. And the cartel was,
from the start, unmistakably at the service of commercial and state
interests!


News Since Feudal Days

Near the middle of the past century, governments, bankers, rich
merchants, kept private couriers who travelled to all important
European capitals. By carrier pigeon--and in America also by pony
express--they sent specific information on prices and market
conditions, plus general political information required for their
long-range business planning. The couriers built up extremely valuable
contacts that would have made them very valuable to newspapers. But
newspapers couldn’t afford their costly services and the couriers
couldn’t afford to lose their rich clients by publishing their
information. Newspapers had the right to print news but no way to get
it.

The telegraph broke that situation wide open. It made the relative
isolation of the newspapers impossible; it spelled the doom of the
private news systems.[A] It ended feudalism in the information field.
But not everyone saw that immediately. Paul Julius Reuter, Prussian
government courier with many business clients and topnotch European
contacts, understood it at once. He determined to switch to newspapers,
offering a telegraphic news service to several papers at once. Germany
was no place for a progressive idea in 1851, and Britain was the
nation with the most extensive world interests, so Reuter set up shop
in London. His idea was a smashing success. Reuters soon was the
all-powerful government-backed British Empire news monopoly.

Charles Havas, a Hungarian, established a similar monopoly for the
French Empire and France’s sphere of interest, and Dr. Bernhard Wolff
did as much for Germany. In the United States, Associated Press grew
out of the same conditions, except that the agency, like the nation
itself, was almost wholly absorbed in internal development, almost
entirely disinterested in the rest of the world. Toward the close of
the century, however, there were signs that the tremendous productive
forces developed under American capitalism would ultimately seek _an_
empire if not world empire. The country began to show more interest in
_world_ news. Associated Press, to improve its monopoly position and
bar the possibility of successful competition at home, sought exclusive
rights to a supply of world news. It made a deal with the European
agencies.

That deal and the world news relationships of which it was a part, were
well hidden from the world prior to World War II, but the war completed
a change in the former secret relationships. Marking this change, A.P.
chief Kent Cooper published the story of the news cartel in 1942. His
book was called _Barriers Down_. Cooper published it only to mobilize
support for his “crusade.”

Cooper’s “crusade” is nothing more than a drive for world news
monopoly. _Barriers Down_ is designed to justify American imperialist
news domination by coating it with high moral purpose. The _London
Economist_, organ of battered British imperialism, notes in its issue
of December 2, 1944:

  Mr. Cooper, like most big business executives, experiences a
  peculiar moral glow in finding that his idea of freedom coincides
  with his commercial advantage. In his ode to Liberty there is no
  suggestion than when all barriers are down the huge financial
  resources of the American agencies might enable them to dominate
  the world. His desire to prevent another Goebbels from poisoning
  the wells will be universally applauded, but democracy does not
  necessarily mean making the whole world safe for A.P. In this,
  as in other post-war issues--such as civil aviation--commercial
  practices are habitually confused with such big words as “liberty
  and the Rights of Man.”

Cooper’s book nevertheless lends the strongest authority to what would
otherwise be an almost incredible story of news imperialism. We shall
lean on it heavily.



_Chapter V_

SECRET HISTORY OF A CARTEL


The story begins in the 1840’s with the formation of the great modern
news agencies in obedience to the click of the telegraph key. At that
time, Great Britain dominated the world. France, a powerful state,
was nevertheless a link in the British system. Germany had not yet
fully emerged as a modern industrial power. Russia, ruling a sprawling
empire, was herself, in a sense, something of a political and economic
“colony” of the more advanced European states. The Far East was one
huge, thinly-disguised sphere for European exploitation, too, with
Britain hogging the lion’s share. The United States, in addition to
exercising little influence in world affairs, lacked the immediate
facilities for world news competition: Great Britain controlled almost
all cable and other communications.

Under these conditions, there arose what Kent Cooper justly terms “the
greatest and most powerful international monopoly of the 19th Century,”
the world news cartel. Considering that A.P. voluntarily participated
in it, Cooper’s highly moral tone is strange. It is true, nevertheless,
that the agencies “brought under their control the power to decide
what the people of each nation would be allowed to know of the people
of other nations and in what shade of meaning the news was to be
presented.”

       *       *       *       *       *

Summarizing the situation, the A.P. boss continues:

  For long years Reuters, acceptably to Havas and Wolff, had divided
  the globe among the three according to Reuters’ idea of proper
  spheres of influence for each.... Reuters received English-speaking
  North America, in which since 1893 the A.P. had bought exclusive
  territorial rights.

  For long years Reuters, acceptably to Havas and Wolff, was granted
  a free hand in Canada. Later this free hand was extended to
  include Mexico, Central America and the West Indies where Reuters
  and Havas held the sovereign rights. The two, however, admitted
  no control whatever to Wolff, the German Agency, in the Western
  Hemisphere. Reuters had Great Britain, including all the colonies
  and dominions, Egypt, Turkey, Japan, China and what might be called
  the suzerain states, or those in which England had exerted a sphere
  of influence.

  Havas [since succeeded by France-Presse] controlled the French
  Empire, Switzerland and all the Latin countries, including Italy,
  Spain, Portugal and those in South America. [Also the Balkans.]

  To Wolff [later D.N.B. or the Deutsches Nachtrichten Buro] fell the
  Scandinavian states, with Russia and all the Slav nations. Austria
  also came under the jurisdiction of the German agency.


A Conflict Is Born

Reuters used its control frankly in the interest of the British Empire
and of British business interests. Havas and Reuters combined to
carry stories that would tend to ridicule American manufactures and
America, but they refrained from such handling of Britain and France
respectively. All over the world, news from America was top-heavy with
Indians on the warpath, lynchings in the South, bizarre crimes in the
North. Havas headed off American business competition with France in
South America--a Havas exclusive territory--by stories belittling U.S.
automobiles and other products. (Very reminiscent, one may note, of the
American news industry’s deliberate belittling of Soviet industrial
products and skills and planning, propaganda that misled even our
highest authorities prior to Stalingrad.)

Anglo-French ridicule was gall and wormwood to American Big Business
as it moved more and more into competition for world markets, world
influence and world power. It was more immediately vexing to Associated
Press but A.P. never went outside the gentlemanly bounds of the
conspiracy. It used the cartel as a club to beat back United Press and
other would-be rivals at home.

Nevertheless, an ultimate conflict between A.P. and Reuters was
inevitable. The United States was building up industrial might and
developing resources to overtake and pass Great Britain in the race
for world power. This was somewhat obscured, for the general observer,
by the rather more aggressive challenge of Germany. Germany, too, had
built up a modern industrial productive apparatus far greater than that
of Britain. It found the world already divided. Markets, raw materials,
the slave labor of colonies and their investment opportunities, had
been “parcelled out” among Britain, France and their satellites:
Holland, Belgium, Portugal. British and French guns were levelled
against any suggestion of sharing the plunder with the newcomers. So
German imperialism levelled its guns, too, and World War I was on.


Peak of Reuter’s Power

With Britain and France and Germany engaged in worldwide warfare while
the United States (until 1917) stood on the sidelines, Reuters, Havas
and Wolff were severely handicapped. Even under peacetime conditions
they could not compete with the American agencies on a commodity-news
basis. Their official or semi-official character restricted their
freedom of action and of judgment. The moment something really
important happened in Europe, they would hesitate, under official
pressure. For example, when the Nazis murdered Austrian Premier
Dollfuss, Havas sent nothing for hours while the Quai d’Orsay debated
how French-controlled areas should be informed of this event, how it
should be interpreted. The “officialese” in which such events were
reported sometimes achieved peaks of silliness. A dispatch to New York
from Havas bureau in Beirut, Syria, in 1934, said:

  French governor visited hinterland first time since elections. On
  every hand he was greeted with enthusiasm by populace which thanked
  him for all France had done to relieve food crisis. Extremists
  threw a few bombs but vigorous police measures reassured people.

Reuters was no less one-sided in its devotion to British interests, and
the national agencies of the smaller States were doubly handicapped. On
the one hand they were mere creatures of Reuters-Havas; on the other,
they were bound out to the service of their own State. The mere listing
of the national agencies dancing to the Reuters-Havas tune establishes
the political significance of the cartel. They were: Amtliche
Nachrichtenstelle, Austria; Agence Telegraphique Belge, Belgium; Agence
Telegraphique Bulgars, Bulgaria; Bureau de Presse, Czechoslovakia;
Ritzaus Bureau, Denmark; Agence Telegraphique Esthonienne, Esthonia;
Finska Notisbyran, Finland; Athena, Greece; Nederlandsch Telegraaf
Agentschap, Holland; Agence Telegraphique Lettone, Latvia; Agence
Telegraphique Hongroise, Hungary; Stefani, Italy; Kokusai, Japan;
Avola, Yugoslavia; Agence Telegraphique Lithuanienne, Lithuania; Norsk
Telegram-Bureau, Norway; Agence Telegraphique Polonaise, Poland; Rador,
Rumania; Rosta, Russia; Fabra, Spain; Tidningarnas Telegrambyra,
Sweden; Agence Telegraphique Suisse, Switzerland; Anatolie, Turkey.

These agencies were financially controlled by Reuters-Havas-Wolff, but
they could not have been independent even if there were no financial
control. In the first place, the cables were British and aside from
direct restrictions imposed by Great Britain on users of the cable,
manipulation of rates could determine the profit or bankruptcy of
a stubborn agency. On top of that, Havas and the smaller agencies
were not only news but also advertising agencies, monopolistic ones.
Newspapers, in Europe and Asia alike, got Reuters-Havas news service
free--in effect, and they had to use it if they wanted the advertising
by which they lived.

This dominating position gave the European agencies a haughty and
clumsy attitude toward transmission of news. They could delay or garble
the most important events. It also gave them no incentive to technical
advance. Havas was still using the stylus instead of the typewriter
in the 1920’s. So long as and wherever Britain and France remained
the ruling powers, the agencies could get away with it. But wherever
and whenever some other power could challenge Anglo-French rule, a
challenge to the news agencies would follow. South America was the
“where” and World War I was the “when.”


Conquest of South America

Havas was boss of South America according to the cartel contract. As
soon as World War I started, therefore, Havas decided exactly what
South Americans could be permitted to learn about the war. It goes
without saying that only the Allied side was to be reported. But
such was the inflexibility of the official agencies, that Havas was
unwilling to transmit even the German war communique when asked to do
so by leading South American papers. It could not unbend that much to
head off the obvious danger of losing South America to some American
rival agency.

This was A.P.’s great opportunity, but the agency was fearful of losing
the advantages of cartel membership if it made a bid for South America.
Manager Melville Stone considered that the cartel might oust A.P.
and admit the newer United Press to membership. Accordingly, he left
unanswered a request by _La Nacion_ of Buenos Aires, one of the world’s
leading newspapers, for A.P. service.

New pressures, however, were at work. Within A.P., Kent Cooper, then
only Traffic Manager, learned for the first time of the cartel and of
A.P.’s humiliatingly inferior position in it. He began what he likes
to call his “great crusade,” by which he means a thirty-year fight to
substitute American for British news domination of the world. From
outside the agency came insistent demands by the government for aid in
advancing national policy. The State Department made a crude subsidy
offer with the aim of bribing the South American press. Stone later
wrote:

  The State Department asked me to employ the editors of almost
  every leading paper in South America on handsome salaries as
  correspondents of A.P. ... whether they sent us news or not ... and
  the government would recoup us for anything we paid.... They want
  something more than a mere news report.... They want some sort of
  illuminating service from the United States to indicate that this
  country is not money-grabbing or territory-grabbing.

Incidentally, a similar proposal was made for the Far East. A.P.
rejected the proposals. Moreover, “government propaganda” was one
important reason. Moreover, “government propaganda” organizations
were regarded as inadequate and unstable instruments for conquering
news control. A.P. felt the government interest, for one thing, was
not likely to survive the war. Even more important was the fact that
the American news industry has always heavily exploited its alleged
“independence of direct government ties” as proof of its non-partisan
character.

But far from refusing all forms of subsidy, the news industry fought
for and obtained aid in the form of “practical rates for news
transmission; rates attractive enough to encourage the export of
news from the U.S.” The government had for some years encouraged the
laying of new American-owned cables. Now, at the “behest of the State
Department,” the American-owned cable company gave lower rates to
American clients than to Havas, for news to South America. American
news went to South America after all, therefore, on behalf of the State
Department.

A.P.’s conservatism might well have cost it the chance to seize South
America. But United Press, unhampered by cartel obligations, started
operations there. That shook A.P.’s complacency. Cooper insisted that
the cartel give A.P. full freedom to operate in South America. Stone
said: “Go ahead and advocate as much liberty as possible, but don’t do
anything to bring a break between the A.P. and our European news agency
allies.” There was, however, no serious resistance. Reuters told Havas
to agree or else. Havas yielded.


Redividing the World

World War I was fought for the redivision of the world among the
existing imperialist powers. Germany lost her colonies and the German
Republic was reduced to the role of a vassal state serving the
American-Anglo-French victors. This situation was duly reflected within
the news cartel where Wolff lost territory and was permitted to serve
only Germany itself.

A.P. scrambled clumsily for a share in the spoils. Cooper hurried to
Versailles to ask the U.S. treaty delegation to fight for A.P. parity
with Reuters and Havas. This was to be expressed in the form of a
“free press” clause in the peace treaty. President Wilson’s right-hand
man, Colonel House, very sympathetic to the American news monopoly’s
desires, agreed to sound out the possibilities. He reported, in a few
days, that the question had been “taken care of privately” and he could
do nothing.

How it was “taken care of,” Cooper reports with great indignation. His
account, coming as it does from a member of the gang--a disgruntled
member but still one of the boys--is of great authority. It is
necessary only to warn that, writing in 1942, he showed no great
anti-Nazi fervor and discreetly dodged the ticklish problem of the
Soviet Union. He does not mention the great _cordon sanitaire_--the
strangling “safety belt”--set up around the new Socialist State after
World War I, but is full of pity for Germany.

Cooper says he learned that a cartel meeting had been held in which
the heads of Havas and Reuters had conferred alone while Dr. Heinrich
Mantler, head of the Wolff Agency, was left to smoulder in an anteroom.
When Reuters-Havas had decided the redivision of the globe, Mantler was
called in and told the bad news.

  Reuters and Havas, matching the political terms of the Versailles
  Treaty, built their own news agency _cordon sanitaire_ around
  Germany. All the political states bordering on Germany were allowed
  to have only news agencies owned or controlled by either Reuters or
  Havas or both. In other words, the position of the news agencies
  in those border countries was harmonious with the determination
  of England and France to keep Germany hemmed in by little nations
  mostly pro-Ally, such as Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Holland,
  Belgium, Switzerland, Austria, Czechoslovakia and Poland.

A borderline area was the Saar Valley, the Palatinate and Rhenish
Prussia. The French Government wanted that for Havas. Reuters was
neither wholly unwilling nor enthusiastic, because Britain wanted a
moderately strong Germany to act as a check on France. Finally, and
subject to the Saar Plebiscite 15 years later, “they made a compromise
by which Wolff Agency might serve there, but a copy of Wolff service
should go to the Havas Agency, and if it was not satisfactory Wolff
could be removed from there.”

The victors were not averse to tearing slices of territory from one
another, either, so within the winning combination some changes were
made. Havas retained the bulk of the Balkans, but Greece and Turkey
passed “into Reuters’ [Britain’s] sphere of influence.”


Battle for Asia

A.P. remained a stepchild during all this time. It obtained a free hand
in South America, as already related. But in general, just as Great
Britain was slow to recognize and acknowledge the unmistakably superior
position of the rival American imperialism, so Reuters took a haughty
tone toward A.P. requests for adjustments in their relations. Outside
the cartel, accordingly, A.P. built up positions and alliances for an
ultimate showdown. Inside A.P., Kent Cooper gathered allies for his
more aggressive program against the still dominant go-slow policy of
Melville Stone.

While Britain was deeply involved in World War I, the U.S.
greatly extended the American communications network. Monopoly in
communications was deliberately fostered to “advance the national
interests.” This process, begun during World War I and continued
through World War II, is described in the previously-cited _Report
on Freedom of the Press_.[B] As this study is financed by a _Time_
magazine grant and has semi-governmental, semi-official news industry
standing, it is not critical of imperialist expansion. All the more
weight must be attached to its admission that State and industry are
one in communications and news-export.

These new government-fostered monopolies now played an important part
in the forward march of American news. Though A.P. had refused to do a
propaganda-job under government control, it was not at all reluctant to
let the government pay for A.P.’s expansion. This is what happened:

The Far East was the scene of the first open clash with Reuters.
Reuters’ absolute domination of world news produced some peculiar
effects on American-Oriental information exchange. West Coast
publishers, led by Hearst, were frantic about the situation. Cooper’s
first ally within A.P. was V. J. McClatchy, California publisher who
reflected the violent anti-British, anti-Japanese policies of Hearst.
McClatchy, in turn, won the support of Adolph Ochs, publisher of the
most powerful newspaper in America--the _New York Times_. A.P. was now
consciously but cautiously working toward an ultimate showdown with
Reuters.

McClatchy went to Washington in 1919 to seek Congressional aid. When he
told Congress about the news aspects of American imperialism’s secret
struggle in the Orient, the legislators were indignant. Reuters, it was
demonstrated, mangled all American news printed in Japan, China and
the Far East as a whole. Even news between the U.S. and the Philippine
Islands had to go by way of London for British profit and British
editorial slant.

Japan was the key news country in the Far East. Until 1914, the
country had no news agency of its own. Reuters not only controlled
the import and export of news but had the direct internal monopoly as
well. Japan had to pay Reuters what amounted to an annual subsidy,
after 1914, to get out of Japan and let the Japanese form a news
agency, Kokusai, which got all its non-Japanese news from Reuters. The
American news report for Far East distribution was now circulated by
Kokusai; Reuters-Havas Far East news to the U. S. was transmitted via
Kokusai. It amounted to an Anglo-Japanese alliance against the U. S.
The garbling of news that resulted was beyond imagination; British bias
strained through Japanese culture and policy!

Congress ordered the U. S. Navy to put its radio circuits at the
disposal of the agencies. The order specified rates that were, in
effect, a subsidy to permit the agencies to compete with Reuters.
Again, it was U.P. that moved first. A new Japanese agency, Nippon
Dempo, was set up and it used the U.P. “report.” Later, Nippon Shimbun
Rengo was formed to replace Kokusai. Rengo constantly sought A.P.
service, but the cartel would not consent. On the whole, British
control of Far Eastern news remained unimpaired.

This was the situation in 1925 when Kent Cooper became General Manager
of A.P. In 1927, Cooper went to Europe to negotiate a new “treaty”
with Reuters, Havas and Wolff. He wanted A.P.’s gains since 1893--the
rights acquired in South America, for instance--put in writing. He
especially wanted the cartel to admit A.P. to Japan on the plea that
other American agencies were there and were serving the home market
with non-cartel news.

As Cooper put it, he wanted a new contract primarily in the interest of
plain-speaking. He said: “It seemed to me that if the A.P. wanted to be
in on a division of the world as between the other three agencies the
contract should specify what territories were allotted to each.” The
new contract did exactly that. Without the shadow of double-talk, it
stated: “Reuters shall have the exclusive exploitation of the following
territories....” The British and Dutch Empires and most of the Far East
were included in these territories. Havas had “exclusive exploitation”
of Italy, Spain, Portugal and the Balkans as well as the French Empire.
Associated Press had “exclusive exploitation” of North America and
shared South America with Havas.

Now that is plain enough even for me, a disillusioned newspaperman
weary of piffle about “freedom of the press.” That is straight business
talk as among “legitimate” monopolists. It is, in short, a cartel
agreement for the division of the world market in news. But there is
a sequel to the story. When Cooper returned from Europe with his new
contract, A.P. Board members were horrified by the word “exploitation.”
Cooper explains their squeamishness by saying that “the word has taken
on a stigma in the United States which it does not have in Europe.”
An evasive word was substituted and the contract was approved.
“Exploitation” disappeared but the cartel reality remained.[C]

With respect to Japan, the head of Reuters, Sir Roderick Jones, made a
verbal agreement to permit A.P. dealings with Rengo. He could not put
it in writing, he said, because it would be a loss of face to Reuters
(that is, to the British Empire). Neither side had any intention of
yielding to the other, in practice. Power would tell, they knew, and
force would decide the issue.


The Showdown

They differed in their estimates of power distribution. The
relationship of forces had vastly changed since 1893. The United States
had been slow to enter world competition because it was busy with
internal development. But the delay actually improved its chances, for
when it finally laid down a claim for world position, it did so on the
basis of an incomparable home market. In the commodity-news industry
this was strikingly clear. At a meeting of the A.P. Board of Directors,
_Chicago Tribune_ publisher McCormick once offered some estimates in
this connection. The estimates were so impressive that Cooper got him
to repeat his statement for the benefit of any directors who had missed
the import. Said McCormick:

  We are pretty much the most important country in the world and much
  the richest country in the world, and in comparing America with
  other foreign countries the press stands probably higher in America
  than any other institution. I think it is a pretty good guess that
  American newspapers print and supply two-thirds of all the world’s
  news, and I think that the revenue of all the American newspapers
  is probably three-fourths of all the revenue of the newspapers of
  the world.

It was on the strength of this tremendously favorable competitive
position that A.P. laid down the gauntlet to Reuters in 1932. It
demanded “free competition.” Meaning that Japan, for instance, must be
free to switch from Reuters to A.P. service. All American monopolies
tend to demand “free competition” because they are now in a position to
strangle their isolated competitors. Nourished by a huge home market
built up with plenty of government aid, they no longer need direct
subsidy and want to establish a no-subsidy rule for younger and weaker
national news industries. The newspaper industry is in an even stronger
position than chemicals, steel and other monopolies. In no other
country has news-publishing grown into a business of comparable size
and power. In no other country does the newspaper business stand so
near the top in the list of Big Businesses.

A.P. understood this very well. Reuters misunderstood it badly. For
years it held out stoutly against A.P.’s right--verbally admitted but
never put in writing--to operate in Japan. Jones was confident that
A.P. would never risk a break with Reuters; he counted on the threat
that Reuters would take U.P. into the cartel if A.P. walked out. Cooper
deliberately led Jones into a trap, pretending eagerness to maintain
the alliance but needling him at all points.

“While I wondered how long it would be before this bubble of Reuters
world domination would burst, I was willing for Sir Roderick to blow
his own bubble so big that it would burst through his own exertion but
I would not puncture it myself,” Cooper gloats.

It burst in 1934. Carrying his pretense of humility and loyalty to the
uttermost limits, Cooper travelled from Japan to London to explain to
Sir Roderick that A.P.’s activities in Japan were within the meaning
of the contract. Pretending to mollify Jones, he encouraged him to
think that his own actions were due to weakness either of A.P. or of
his position within A.P. Accordingly, Jones refused to sanction the
A.P.-Rengo deal. He announced that the cartel agreement must be renewed
on the old terms or Reuters would allow it to lapse.

Reuters had fallen into a trap. Not only A.P., but the American news
monopoly as a whole was determined to humble the British. United
Press joined A.P. in an agreement establishing between themselves the
principle of “non-exclusive access to foreign news at its source.” This
meant that U.P. would not agree to replace A.P. in the European cartel.
So A.P. blandly notified Reuters that it “agreed” to let the “alliance”
lapse.

This announcement exploded with bomb-force in London. Sir Roderick’s
house of cards collapsed. Reuters was through as the news dictator of
the world and A.P. was king. Within a few hours Reuters, recognizing
what it had long failed to see, offered to capitulate. Jones hurried to
New York, begging for an audience. He was forced to humiliate himself
enough to satisfy Cooper who had been waiting years for that triumph.
Then the “alliance” was renewed--on A.P.’s terms.


World Conquest

American news domination of the world was now assured. The
“non-exclusive” principle did not in the least destroy the cartel;
it merely made the cartel an instrument of American policy. The old
system of recognizing political controls remained to some extent, in
that Reuters, for instance, retained the dominions and protectorates as
partially privileged territory. But a new system became the dominant
one. The new system opened territories once dominated by Britain,
France and Germany, to American news penetration, just as the basic
industrial-military potential of the United States was beating the
way for American political-economic penetration into those sacred
preserves. The “non-exclusive” principle governed the new contract.
The term sounds very lofty and moral. It seems to mean that A.P. and
Reuters would compete everywhere on equal terms and let the better man
win. Not only that, but A.P.’s American rivals would have the same
chance.

Alas, it meant nothing of the sort. The principle merely established a
new kind of monopoly in which political intervention of the State on
behalf of the monopoly no longer was so blatant. Competition was still
sharply restricted--not by cartel agreement but by economic pressure.
A.P. informed Reuters for instance, that the British agency was
absolutely free to deal with U.P. The new contract guaranteed that and
so did A.P.’s agreement with U.P. But, said A.P., if Reuters chose to
exercise that freedom, A.P. would choose to deal with Reuters’ British
rival, Exchange Telegraph, and so destroy Reuters! A.P. also informed
Reuters it would have to deal with Canadian Press through A.P.: thus,
Canada passed from the British to the American Empire!

That wasn’t really the end. World War II put the period on the new
contract. Havas crumbled all-at-once-and-nothing-first like the
wonderful one-hoss shay. Reuters’ internal crisis matured and in
1941 the agency was liquidated as a private profit-seeking body. It
was reorganized as the British equivalent of A.P. Within the Empire
it is struggling for survival against terrific American pressures,
just as the Empire itself is creaking under American expansionist
strains and the impact of the rising liberation forces released by the
anti-Axis war. Sideswiped as a British government propaganda agency in
a semi-official State Department document recently, Reuters indignantly
denied the charge. In doing so, it acknowledged the British surrender
to the American commercial-sensational news pattern which it resisted
for so many years. Said Reuters chief Christopher Chancellor: “We are
not purveyors of British news; news cannot be British or American--it
is an international commodity.”

The German D.N.B. has, of course, been liquidated. So has Japan’s
Domei. An American-sponsored German Agency, D.A.N.A., has been set
up in U.S.-occupied Germany with favorable competitive advantages as
against the British and French agencies. U. S. Treasury funds have
been used openly in the battle for news control of Austria and other
countries. In Japan, under exclusive American occupation, American news
dictatorship is assured. With Britain restricted to Southeast Asia,
the whole Far East is rapidly becoming an American private preserve.
And not even the limits of the thinly-concealed modern American empire
provide boundaries for the American news empire.

Only the Soviet Union and the new Eastern European democracies,
together with the anti-imperialist forces within the dominated
territories, stand in the way of complete global sway by the new
empire-aspirant and its news monopoly. Against them, the “free press”
monopolists are mobilizing the blackmail batteries of atomic diplomacy.
“It is unthinkable,” declares Kent Cooper, “that the peace will not be
dictated by America and Britain and that there should not be included
in its terms the principles affecting the press as I have outlined
them.”



_Chapter VI_

RESPONSIBILITY--A CHALLENGE TO THE PRESS


If World War I was a complex struggle for redivision of the
world between two imperialist groups, World War II was still
more complicated. An effective alliance of all forces opposed to
German-Japanese enslavement of the world was achieved. Yet behind this
alignment a good many battles were fought for imperialist advantage.

The capitalist powers had joined with the Socialist Soviet Union in a
Grand Alliance, but the military activities of Britain and the United
States indicated that their whole heart was not in the arrangement. The
Soviet Union was permitted for three whole years to carry the burden
of the fiercest assault known to history; under British pressure, the
Anglo-American military power was distributed along the relatively
inactive Empire lifeline. Thus, in effect, the allies fought Germany
with one hand and with the other built up positions from which to crowd
and “contain” the Soviet State.

Within the Anglo-American camp there was likewise double dealing. Each
party maneuvered with a view to postwar advantage for No. 1 at the
expense of his “gallant ally.” Early in the war, Washington could boast
that there was no need of a Second Front since there were already a
Third, Fourth, and even a Tenth Front. This merely revealed that United
States forces were scattered all over the globe with little relation to
the needs of the alliance but with obvious effects on future adjustment
of Anglo-American differences. As part of the “war effort” for
instance, a contract was made to build and operate an American military
airfield in Arabia, across the gulf from Persia, for three years
_after_ the war. This was but the expression of a series of deals with
Arabia, notably for oil, by which the U. S. became dominant there while
Britain was forced back into second place. The phenomenon was worldwide.

As a result, American imperialism feels superbly assured of its present
strength. That assurance is demonstrated by our current atom-bomb
diplomacy. All loan and other negotiations stress the determination
of our profit-swollen trusts to impose their rule over the world. In
the process, the British are often forced to divide former private
preserves, such as southern Iran, and virtually to abandon competitive
rights in huge areas once under their chief control, such as China. The
American methods tend to be oblique: military and technical missions
are established in the country in question, “upon request.” No request,
no loan. This method replaces the crude “Opium War” pattern in which
Britain built and maintained the world’s greatest empire of the past.
But the same bloody suppression of “natives” is behind both methods.
In recent months the British have slaughtered Greeks and Indonesians;
unwilling Marines have made Lidices in North China.

A dispatch to the _New York Times_ from Athens helps illustrate the new
method. After noting that the United States is far from withdrawing
from Greece, the dispatch says: “The State Department’s comments ...
sounded much like what the British had been telling the Greeks for some
time.... It is believed that the only substantial difference between
British and American views relates to the extent to which Allied
officials should be injected into the Greek civil administration. The
British originally intended to ask for a practical veto over acts of
the Central Bank and Ministries dealing with economic affairs. It is
now suggested that the British will suggest something much closer to
the concept enunciated by the State Department yesterday: technical
assistance to Greece ‘upon the request of the Greek Government.’”

In effect, as in Kent Cooper’s 1927 contract, the word “exploitation”
has been removed, but the imperialism is still there. And among the
industries making great headway in all “assisted” countries is the
American news industry. It is favored by the change in the ownership
of communications. Britannia no longer rules the waves--either of the
air or the sea. Telephone, telegraph, cable dominance is no longer
hers. Aviation, radio, multiple-address newscasting and facsimile
broadcasting, are off to a good start under the control of American
interests. And whatever advantages British imperialism still has,
she is forced by the State Department to relinquish in return for a
loan. Cable communications with British Empire points, for instance,
are still in British hands. Yet not long ago conferences were held in
Bermuda and Rio de Janeiro at which American government representatives
compelled the British to cut press cable rates from New York to Empire
points. This admitted American opinion-forming “news” to at least equal
status with similar British propaganda in the Empire itself.

Now the government is also going into the business of distributing
“news about America, by Americans.” The news agencies contend that
a government information service is “propaganda,” whereas they
“distribute the news as such, wholly unbiased and without intent to
influence.” This is an empty boast. Riegel, in _Mobilizing for Chaos_,
says: “The press associations differ in the amount of direct government
control affecting them, but all are obviously governed by the
newspapers they serve, and the destinies of all of them are inseparably
united with the destinies of the nations with which they are
identified. An impartial international news-gathering organization does
not exist.” The _Report on Freedom of the Press_ calls news-export an
“adjunct of diplomacy and national policy. This inevitable relationship
is no less real in the U.S. for having been avoided by the government,
resisted by industry, and needlessly confused by imaginary threats of
encroachment upon the First Amendment.”

State Department, A.P., U.P., I.N.S., alike provide “opinion-forming”
material designed to further the current dangerous drive for American
imperialist rule of the world. They are at one, moreover, in pressing
foreign news services to abandon their present spheres of influence
in favor of the American news monopoly. The Soviet news system, which
checks the functioning of outside opinion-formers in the Soviet Union
and helps limit their activities in Eastern Europe, is their favorite
target. But they have made little headway there.

When Randal Heymanson of the North American Newspaper Alliance visited
Czechoslovakia last year, government spokesman Dr. Theodore Kuska
talked with him. Dr. Kuska said the Czech film industry would be
nationalized and _newspapers would be published only by political
parties, trade unions and similar responsible groups_. “Only in this
way,” said Dr. Kuska, “can the press be regarded as truly free.”

It is not recorded whether the N.A.N.A. representative swooned on the
spot. But for the benefit of Brooks Atkinson, it should be pointed out
that some of the responsible groups Dr. Kuska speaks of cannot even be
heard in the American press. The conditions earlier described prevent
their publishing papers or obtaining circulation of their views.
Thus, control of the press and control of opinion is rigidly frozen
into monopoly shapes here; the Czech proposal seems to promise a much
broader freedom of the press.


Responsibility of the Press

Indeed, if Mr. Atkinson will look about him in the Soviet Union, he
will see an extension of the idea suggested by Dr. Kuska. As described
by Alexander Kendrick at an American-Soviet Cultural Conference in New
York recently, the Soviet press is unique. Before the Revolution, there
were 859 newspapers in the Czar’s realm, with a total circulation of
2,700,000 and a policy dictated by the Russo-Asiatic Bank. Today there
are 9,000 papers in 80 languages with a circulation of 40,000,000 and
several readers to every copy of each paper.

Compared to our papers, there are obvious differences: no sensation, no
spice, no scandal, no desperate competitive drive for entertainment.
The newspapers are all informative, they tend to be typographically
excellent, their news is presented in careful, balanced form so that
the constant reader is prepared to grasp new developments as they take
place. The cultural leaders of the country, scholars, critics, writers
and musicians, contribute to the papers.

The principal difference, however, is in their publishers. No paper is
published for profit. No multimillionaire can control public opinion.
No people’s organization is without a newspaper: trade unions, hundreds
of them; national groups; local, district and national government
councils; sport groups; youth groups; women’s organizations. They are
crusaders, too; not reactionary anti-vivisection crusaders like the
Hearstlings here, but stinging critics of public and governmental
bodies for sloppy execution of their tasks. And there is a contact
between the readers and the papers that would be inconceivable here.
Newspaper staffs hold regular meetings with readers to discuss
problems raised by the readers and most papers have an annual
readers’ conference at which editors make public accounting of their
stewardship. The Soviet Constitution guarantees printing presses and
stocks of paper to the organizations of the people, such as trade
unions, cultural and scientific organizations, etc. It has not remained
a paper promise: the press is entirely in popular hands. It operates
in a responsible way to further Soviet objectives by stimulating more
active support, by exposing failures.

There is, however, definitely no freedom of the press for
rent-collecting landlords, bankers, industrial monopolists. The Soviet
press is frankly not a formally democratic press but a press of the
working people. That no longer bars any important body of Soviet
citizens, since exploiting classes no longer exist there. The rule
operates primarily to assure an ever-expanding popular participation in
the nation’s political and economic life, while it hampers the work of
hostile foreign intelligence services. This would hardly seem the fit
subject of a diplomatic protest by the British Foreign Office or the
U. S. State Department.

A press of that kind would solve most of the problems of “freedom
of the press” in our country. It can be attained somewhat short of
Socialism, as is occurring in some parts of Eastern Europe. But such a
goal must be recognized as a distant one. Its attainment will require
the utmost effort of the whole American people. A first step is to
spread understanding of the class character and function of the press
as a whole.


What Can We Do?

Is there anything we can do about the present super-monopoly control of
our press which gags all but a handful of the 140,000,000 Americans?
The individual writer can hardly formulate meaningful proposals along
this line. Labor itself, particularly the larger progressive unions,
the C.I.O. as a whole, and strong combinations in industrial areas
where trade union membership is concentrated, must certainly give more
thought to the publication of newspapers. To be successful, they will
need labor’s formal participation but they must not be limited to trade
union scope. On the contrary, they should champion labor’s political
and other interests, as well as the interests of the people as a
whole. Labor must also seek a more direct voice in the few relatively
pro-labor dailies now in circulation, because direct participation
will reduce the waverings to which liberal papers tend. _Labor must
also combat the commodity-news pattern and help create an audience for
balanced, trustworthy information. A labor paper should aim at that
end._

Beyond that, labor and liberals should consider legislation to ease the
present monopoly. Postal and communications subsidies--free mailing,
in fact--plus other government aid, should be given to newspapers and
mail-circulation newsletters of responsible popular bodies. At the
same time, government subsidies should be taken away from the monopoly
press; private enterprise should be compelled to stand on its own feet
in the publishing business.

Finally, the truth about the American press--that it is the
uncontrolled and unlimited voice of monopoly capital--should not
operate to discourage constant pressure on the owners to deal fairly
and adopt more liberal policies. This is a democracy, whatever its
monopoly limitations; the publishers cannot completely ignore voices
that are numerous enough and insistent enough. But the pressure should
be concentrated where it has most chance to do good: on the powerful
pro-fascist press bloc responsible for the worst excesses of our
monopoly press. The recent picket lines and boycott of the _Daily
News_ in protest against columnist John O’Donnell’s anti-Semitic
provocations, demonstrate that results can be obtained. As a matter
of fact, the “Fascist fringe” is very vulnerable. A good, strong,
nationwide boycott, centering on the more blatantly fascist preachings
of the bloc, might very well act as a deterrent and check on both
policy and ownership. The curbing of the reactionary bloc would improve
the whole tone of the press. This is the nearest thing to an attainable
free press objective in the United States, at least for today.

It goes without saying that any realistic effort to improve our press,
must operate within the framework of a larger political program.
Only a program that understands the necessity for curbing the huge
monopolies--even within the limits of the capitalist system--can
seriously approach the problem of press freedom. None but a program of
independent labor-progressive political action can even aim at this
goal. Only a program that takes Socialism as its ultimate objective,
will consistently understand and face the problems along the way. This
places the heaviest responsibility upon Marxists and class-conscious
workers, manual and intellectual, newspapermen not least among them.



FOOTNOTES


[A] Banks, oil companies, etc., still have experts stationed in key
cities abroad to keep them posted on specialized business developments
of the greatest ultimate general political significance. “This kind of
intelligence service, which many foreign chancelleries might envy, has
been of great service to America’s foreign trade,” says O. W. Riegel,
in _Mobilizing for Chaos_. The vital news gathered by these private
agencies is withheld from the press, except when calculated “leaks”
will serve the interests of industry or of the State as a whole. The
press never howls about this kind of censorship.

[B] Published April, 1946, under the title of _Peoples Speaking to
Peoples_.

[C] Word doctoring is a national industry. The award for the best
public relations trick of 1945 went to Dr. Claude Robinson for helping
industry in its biggest job: “The proper interpretation of profits to
the public.”



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Transcriber’s Notes


Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a
predominant preference was found in the original book; otherwise they
were not changed.

Simple typographical errors were corrected; unbalanced quotation
marks were remedied when the change was obvious, and otherwise left
unbalanced.

On the Publisher’s page, to the left of “209” is a symbol that probably
is a Union label.

Footnotes, originally at the bottoms of pages, have been resequenced
and placed together at the end of the main text, but before the
advertisement.

Page 32: ‘Moreover, “government propaganda”’ occurs on two consecutive
lines, but the first one was incomplete, ending with ‘propa-’ (no
quotes). Transcriber completed it to make it comprehensible.



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