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
The publisher agrees to reprint on news or editorial pages of said
newspaper such notices, set in the body type of said paper and bearing
no mark to indicate advertising, as are furnished from time to time by
said Jennings Agency at the rate of —— per line, and to furnish such
agency extra copies of paper containing such notes at four cents per
copy.
In the same way the Standard Oil Company was shown to have paid from
five hundred to a thousand dollars for the publication of a single
article in Kansas newspapers. The Standard Oil had a subsidized press of
its own—for example, the “Oil City Derrick”—and it had subsidized
“Gunton’s Magazine” to the extent of twenty-five thousand dollars a
year.
In the same way it was brought out by Governor Hunt of Arizona, during
the recent great copper strike, that the mine-owners had been bribing
the local newspapers in Greenlee County for printing “plate-matter”
favorable to them. It was shown that the liquor lobby had maintained an
enormous “slush” fund for the press. It was shown that the great public
utility interests of the Middle West had maintained a publicity bureau
to send out material against municipal ownership. It was shown that the
high tariff interests had been maintaining a Washington bureau and
sending out “news letters,” all paid for. It was shown that the railroad
companies were doing the same thing; in a single office of their
publicity department—that in Chicago—they had forty-three employes, and
the manager stated to Ray Stannard Baker that before this bureau began
its work, four hundred and twelve columns of matter opposed to the
railroads had appeared in the newspapers of Nebraska, but after the
bureau had been in operation for three months, in one week the
newspapers of Nebraska had published two hundred and two columns
favorable to the railroads, and only four columns against them!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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