The Brass Check: A Study of American JournalismSinclair, Upton
General
The Brass Check: A Study of American Journalism
Sinclair, Upton
Associated Press; Journalism -- United States; Press -- United States
Also there are three afternoon papers in Los Angeles—all three
sensational, all three commercial, with hardly the pretense of a public
policy. There was brought to my attention the case of Raoul Palma, a
young Mexican Socialist of an especially fine type, who had earned the
enmity of the Los Angeles police by persisting in speaking on the Plaza.
They had brought against him a charge of murder, as perfect a case of
“frame-up” as I ever saw. I spent much time investigating the case,
which failed for lack of evidence when brought before a jury. But the
city editors and managing editors of the Los Angeles newspapers, to whom
I took the evidence of this “frame-up,” were not moved to any fervors. I
was able to get one or two small items published, but I was not able to
find a spark of human feeling, nor yet an ideal of public welfare in the
management of the journals upon which I called. But suppose that I had
gone to them with the news that I was about to build a new million
dollar hotel in Los Angeles; or that I had purchased the Catalina
Islands, and was about to develop them for tourists; or that I was about
to start an airplane service up the coast!
Quite recently a great rubber concern has started a six million dollar
factory in Los Angeles; and such ecstasies as seize our papers! Columns
and columns, day after day; pictures of the wondrous structure, and of
the president of the company—I think I have had the features of this
pudgy little person thrust upon me not less than a dozen times! And his
ideas—not merely about the rubber business and the commercial prospects
of Southern California, but about the League of Nations, and the “Plumb
plan” and labor unions and strikes and Bolshevism!
On the other hand, there is a movement now under way to organize the
actors in the motion-picture industry in Southern California; and how
much space does this get from the Los Angeles newspapers? On August 18,
1919, there was held in the Hollywood Hotel a mass meeting of members of
the theatrical profession, to inform them concerning the meaning of the
actors’ strike in New York, and to solicit donations for the strikers.
Not a line about this meeting in any Los Angeles paper! And not a line
about the strike of the moving picture workers which came soon
afterwards!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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