Show The Myth of the Free Press By William M. Reedy in The independence of the press is a In every city the papers may appear to fight one another upon the but in every case they have a business combination to shut out the The established daily papers in any city are as much a trust las the steel trust or the Standard Oil while the Associated Press is another national it is exceptionally rare that any one can break in upon the combination and fight and if one it must be solely through the possession of financial support great enough to fight to a finish the established newspaper wealth of the controlling and owning newsboys and news dealers Of when a new paper so backed succeeds in establishing it is not to be expected that the paper will take up the cause of the people against the interest of the men of great who have put their money into the new journalistic The newspapers of any city will always be found a unit when there comes up any matter in which the public-service interests and the interests of the advertisers are a At the height of the recent or perhaps we should say the present the daily newspapers were as dumb as before the the brazen effrontery and the sublime nerve of the consolidated banks in refusing to give the depositors their own and in issuing promises to which had no more validity than the rankest In St. when one newspaper presumed to utter a feeble chirp upon the in one the office was jammed and crammed with great ordered there by the to protest against further criticism of the lawless action of the There was no pretense that what the bankers were doing was but the newspaper had to modify its and said very little up to the time that all the were called Naturally I will be is the remedy for all I don't know that I have formulated I will say that I don't believe in the cry for more law on or any other have too much law I don't in the autocratic powers of suppression being vested in the postoffice Of I do not believe in allowing fraudulent schemes to run riot the people have all been skinned of the money before there can be a court of adjudication on the charge of fraudulent use of the I don't believe in the suppression of papers for the expression of I don't believe in the suppression of papers as that discuss decently the physiological facts of To what an absurdity the postoffice may go in of I would recall that a newspaper in Chicago was deprived of the privileges of the mails because it advertised er's History of Prostitution i cording to the postoffice ties this was aD obscene W when in point of fact it obscene than the Report of iw Bureau of and Mini the Patent Office the Un J I believe if a can be suppressed because it no government at all it can be suppressed for any government which may he opposed to the form of or its constituent leaders which undertakes the Law won't cure the evils I sketched out I don't believe there should be any with the freedom of the The right to print is but he who prints or should responsible for damage done to other in the exercise of his I am inclined to believe that the time is about here when we shall have to return to the use of the if we are to have such thing as free utterance of heretical and opinion in this country is always and everywhere nothing but the idea that this government has de- from its original it has built up through oligarchy of an ge doing so has necessarily outrageous violence to of equal ian be no privileges if there expropriation of the an the holder of Every privilege is an arrogation of the some or of at With the newspapers closed to the ith new there is no I or him to except to The liberties of of and of Ger-bo far as they have in some re-they have more liberty than ve ourselves were gained lithe dissemination of ideas but for the Tom for would have been no can and no lib-or With the newspapers absolutely lied by the men and inter-hose sole desire is the of the present the great organs of public minion openly fighting or secretly the popular K a return of this nation to the of it would be a matter of but a short it will be impossible for or set of devoted to principle antagonistic to the our more and more to secure felicity for their The newspaper is gradually such a state of ossification under the influence restrictions put upon it by wealth interests of the in which it is irruption into one of their of a man with an idea is enough to create a panic and Salt for the There i's no 6 an attempt made to speak pilly for the Every great subject is consid- first in its relation to its the public The supplements and the comic arc unloaded upon a apparently with n Purpose than to debauch minds and prevent thein L. doing any serious Kut the case is not can be My ion is that the country editor can and help Let him study the daily paper in the light of such instances of a character as I have described and of many others which he can find out for himself by a little and let him cease to follow the lead of the papers of the cities on public Let him think for and write his own opinions in a way to make his readers If he will but pause to take a look at things for- a little he will find in nearly every important matter upon which the editor is called upon to express he is burdened chiefly with advice and suggestions from people in his own community whose personal interests are most at stake in relation to this He will find the people in every community who are in close touch the men who run and draw results from the great corporations in the larger are always the men who are ready to point out the beauties of He will find them eloquent On the theory that what is good for them is good for the whole He will find them presenting to him arguments which are more or less in the great in opposition to new men and new He will find that the as a takes his cue finally from these great He will find that all the machinery for the making of public opinion is in the hands of people whose interests it is that public opinion shall in no way interfere with their He will find his every mail with printed slips from various publicity which he can use and in every case he will find that the purpose and purport of this slip matter is to bolster up some great private interest built upon public rights and or to discredit some man or proposing to put a check to of roch the aggrandizement wealth by the restoration to the community of the rights have been filched away from of corrupt through the connivance The sort of corrupt journal to which I have flourishes because not It the people do its news m or torts and perverts der to lead the occasional thinking reader to wrong for a man is certain to reach a wrong conclusion if his reason-off is necessarily based upon false premises for The God made the human and it is by far the most exquisite and wonderful organization which has come to us from the Divine It is a study for one's whole If an astronomer is an physiologist is still Love has power to give in a moment what toil can scarcely give in an |