Man-bites-dog may be a gag but it is no joke. It contains the link between the obvious faults of our press and their hidden disease. The techniques by which American newspapers turn events into profit are all an expression of the man-bites-dog idea. The compulsory use of the “lead” and headline (with the consequent development of the “headline mentality” decried by the late President Roosevelt), is merely the final expression of the technical process. The whole process consists in finding or creating sensations to exploit. The object being to sell papers, not to maintain just values, “news” is not that which informs but that which sells another newspaper to a badgered reader. Not only complicated international affairs but even “local” stories are distorted beyond recognition of the facts by these techniques. The “crime waves” cooked up out of quite average statistics from time to time are a sample (whatever further reactionary ends they may serve). The preoccupation with selling papers against fierce competition leads to the American practice of an edition every thirty seconds. This mania for speed, plus the man-bites-dog news formula, works to corrupt and discourage the men who handle news. At length, even the boasted accuracy of the press about elementary facts becomes a myth and a fraud. “The reliability of news accounts is far below what it was years ago ... the reporter is trained to look for the bizarre as all-important ...” writes Oswald Garrison Villard in _The Disappearing Daily_. Anyone who has ever figured in a news story knows that the printed “facts” have little to do with reality! True and Unbiased News News was not always limited to this formula of sensation. The telegraph changed the whole basis of newspaper production and sale. It compelled papers to carry a picture of the whole country and ultimately the whole world whereas they used to be little more than local bulletins. Costs greatly increased, and to defray them publishers formed pools. Thus the modern news agency was born and with the agency came a standardized manner of treating news. When the first agencies began operating, newspapers were very violent in their opinions and intemperate in expressing them. If a news agency wanted to serve all, it would have to find a way of reporting what would offend none. At first, transmission of a limited kind of news was undertaken: deaths, fires, market prices, textual matter. To cover the whole range of news, however, the agency had to learn how to report controversial matters that all the papers wanted, in a way acceptable to all. For instance, it must report a political contest in a form printable by papers backing either major party. The news agencies learned to do that just 100 years ago.