Public opinion; Public relations; Publicity; Social psychology
That the press is so frequently unable to achieve a result on which
its combined members are unanimously set makes it evident that the
press itself is working in a medium which it cannot entirely control.
The _New York Times_ motto, “All the news that’s fit to print,” drives
this point home. The standards of fitness created in the minds of
the publishers express the point of view of a mass of readers, and
this enables the newspapers to achieve and maintain circulation and
financial success.
The very fact that newspapers must sell to the public is an evidence
that they must please the public and in a measure obey it. In the press
there is a very human tendency to compromise between giving the public
what it wants and giving the public what it _should_ want. This is
equally true in music, where artists like McCormack or Rachmaninoff
popularize their programs. It is true in the drama, where managers,
producers and authors combine to adjust plots, situations and endings
to what the public will be willing to pay to see. It is true in art, in
architecture, in motion pictures. It is true of the lecture platform
and of the pulpit.
So-called radical preachers, for example, usually succeed in
broadcasting their radical ideas only when their following is prepared
to accept their views. The Rev. Percy Stickney Grant was a great
problem to the upholders of the accepted order, only because there was
so large a body of parishioners eager to hear and accept his _dicta_.
The Rev. Billy Sunday, evangelist, derived his following from among
people who were awaiting a faith-stirring appeal.
Another evidence of the fact that a powerful outside influence helps
make the forces that mould public opinion is shown by the newspapers in
the actual selection of news. The public actually demands that certain
types of facts be omitted. The standing problem of every newspaper
office--the winnowing of the day’s news from the mass of material that
reaches the editorial desks--illustrates pointedly the need there is to
examine the reasons which prompt the editors in selection.
In an exceedingly interesting advertisement published by the _New York
Tribune_, on April 19, 1922, the _Tribune’s_ editors state the problem
most graphically. The advertisement is headed, “What Else Happened That
Day?” and it reads as follows:
“Madame Caillaux was on trial in Paris for killing Gaston
Calmette.
“In Long Island a woman was mysteriously shot in a doctor’s
office while on a night visit.
“Forty-five stage coaches were held up in Yellowstone Park by
two masked bandits who took all the cash of 165 tourists.
“Romantic crime, mystery crime, adventurous crime, a public
eagerly interested--and they suddenly dropped from the
newspapers. The public forgot them. As news, these events
became as if they had never happened. Something else had
happened.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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