English Newspapers and Political Education

— In Boston, a few days ago, I came across a news item in one of the evening papers which to me seemed somewhat curious. It was to the effect that bids had been received at the city hall for publishing the proceedings at the meetings of the city council, and that the bid of one of the morning journals, whose owners were willing to undertake the work for $9500 a year, had been accepted. From the same paragraph I ascertained that the work had previously been done by one of the evening papers ; and as I was a little concerned to see the nature of the service rendered for this comparatively large payment from the city treasury, I turned up the files, and found that, on the day following the last meeting of the city council, there was published a report of its proceedings extending to six or seven columns. It was evidently a report which had been prepared, not by the newspaper’s own reporters, but by the minuting clerk of the council, with the aid of two or three shorthand writers. The report was set in a fashion which printers would describe as solid ; the whole page was marked by the absence of cross-headlines and other devices of the reporters’ and printers’ arts designed to make newspaper reading easy and attractive.

Apart from this solidity and baldness, the report was of much the same kind as a morning paper in Manchester or Leeds would present to its readers on the day following the meeting of the city council, and which would be regarded in the newspaper office as valuable news, always furnished by the paper’s own reporters, and to make room for which much other news, looked upon as of a less interesting character, would be thrown aside. To me, this divergence between the English and the American point of view as to what constitutes news seems significant, and appears to afford some key to the different ways in which municipal and national politics are regarded in England and in the United States. In England, all intelligence concerning the municipal life of a city is looked upon as news of first value, and eagerly and systematically collected. English editors would be greatly surprised if they were invited to send in bids for publishing the reports of the city council. They publish them already, and to the fullest extent, not because any subsidy is paid for this service by the municipality, but because newspaper readers demand news of this kind ; and if one paper does not furnish it, they will turn to another which does.

In their general news columns, the newspapers of Manchester and Birmingham, of Edinburgh and Glasgow, are as cosmopolitan as those of London. They furnish their readers with almost as much foreign intelligence as those of London ; oftentimes longer parliamentary reports are given in them than in London papers. They give quite as much attention to art and literature ; and with respect to two or three of the important papers in the provincial cities, their advertising space is of equal value with that of the morning papers published in the metropolis. Notwithstanding these claims on their space, the Manchester and Glasgow papers often publish reports of the town council extending almost to a page, and give proportionately large space to the proceedings of the school board. Every speech is not given verbatim. Except in debates of first importance, the speeches are cut down a little ; but in this work of summarizing the speeches from shorthand notes, the Speaker’s own words are preserved, and the reports are as absolutely free from a partisan bias and from any ideas of the reporters as are the verbatim reports published in the official journal of Boston.

It has long been a canon in English journalism that, whatever may be said on the editorial page about public men and public movements, the intelligence with regard to them on the news pages shall be free from any party prejudices. Not only are speeches, either in full or in summary, given in the speaker’s own words and without any trace of party color, but in the better class newspapers, in those which seek to act up to the higher traditions of modern English journalism, even headlines with a partisan tinge are not permitted. A reporter who is attending a Liberal meeting, as the representative of a Liberal newspaper, is perhaps a little disposed to overestimate the numbers and the enthusiasm in writing his introductory lines. There the difference between the reports in the Liberal and Conservative papers comes to an end. If both papers report the speeches with anything like fullness, from the point of view of people who were not at the meeting, but who desire to know what was said and done there, one report will be as good as another. The chances are that both papers will have the same report, either supplied by the same news agency, or due to the fact that the reporters of the two papers form themselves into a corps, and write the report of the more important speeches in duplicate.

The editorial writers of the Tory paper will criticise the arguments of the Liberal speakers on the editorial page ; but on its news pages the Tory paper will act as fairly towards a Liberal meeting of any importance as the Liberal paper. The Liberal paper may give a longer report, but, except for this, there will be little difference in the actual news values of the two reports.

The line between editorial writing and reporting is sharply drawn in English newspapers. Reporters are not permitted to diverge into editorial comment. If a political speaker makes a startling admission or a significant statement, the reporter does not attempt to emphasize it. It goes in with the rest of his story, and will get what attention it demands only on the editorial page. This method of handling speeches characterizes the local weekly newspaper publislied in a small town, as well as the Standard or the Scotsman. It characterizes all political work. Parliamentary proceedings are reported in this way ; so are the speeches of members of Parliament made in the constituencies ; and, as has already been indicated, the reporting of the municipal councils is done in accordance with the same traditions. It is not pretended that these traditions go further back than the era of modern British journalism. Everybody knows how, in the early days of parliamentary reporting, Dr. Johnson was careful that the Whigs never got the best of it in the reports he wrote. But since the Reporters’ Gallery at Westminster became an established institution, since the reporters ceased to be there on sufferance, and especially since shorthand reporting became general, these traditions as to the duties of the editorial writer and those of the reporter have been firmly established, and it will need a great inroad on the love of fairness characteristic of the English people to break them down.

It might have been supposed that the increasing hurry of modern life would make some change as to the fullness and the non-partisan nature of the reports of political speeches, in and out of Parliament. It has brought about some innovations. In parliamentary work, it has led to what is known as the sketch, which tells the story of a sitting at Westminster in a column or a column and a half. This is usually written in a partisan tone ; it is generally tuned to the politics of the editorial page. The sketch, however, has not supplanted the shorthand writer’s report, — it has only supplemented it ; and even the sketch need not be read by those who want a short but not a partisan report. To meet their need, a colorless summary is published ; so that students of English parliamentary proceedings may read them in full from the shorthand writer’s notes, take the story of them as it is given by the writer of the sketch, content themselves with the bare and colorless outline published under the heading of the News of the Day, and, finally, have the proceedings at Westminster interpreted and commented upon from a partisan point of view on the editorial page.

It is hardly possible to overestimate the good effect on public life which results from the way in which men in public life are generally regarded by the English press. A man who is in politics, either local or national, comes in for his share of criticism, — he cannot escape it ; but he always knows where and under what conditions it will be meted out to him ; and if criticism oversteps the line, and degenerates into misrepresentation or libel, he knows where he is certain of his remedy. He is not the butt of every reporter with whom he may come into contact. From one source of annoyance and injustice he is almost free : he does not find his language willfully distorted in what is put forward as a report of his speech. He may suffer, at times, from an unworkmanlike summary of his speeches ; but this is the only risk he runs, so far as the news columns of the newspapers are concerned.

English reporters are apt to rely too much on shorthand writing. They are not as sprightly as American reporters. But the great use to which English reporters put shorthand, and the wholesome dread they have of using any but a man’s actual words in reporting his speeches, tend to give English reporting the reputation for accuracy which it now generally enjoys. Accuracy and fairness are the first requisites with an English reporter doing political work. Consequently, when English people read a report of a speech in Parliament, an address of a member to his constituents, or a discussion in the city council, they know and feel that they are reading what the speaker actually said, and not what the reporter thinks he said, or imagines he should have said. They get the speech standing quite apart from any opinions about it or comments upon it ; and with this before them, they are able to form their own judgments of the question under discussion, and of the attitude of the speaker towards it. Speeches so reported have an undoubted educational value, and a good and far-reaching effect on municipal and national political life.