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.