3
Yet all this does not go to the root of the matter. For while the
economics of journalism is such as to depress the value of news
reporting, it is, I am certain, a false determinism which would
abandon the analysis at that point. The intrinsic power of the
reporter appears to be so great, the number of very able men who pass
through reporting is so large, that there must be some deeper reason
why, comparatively speaking, so little serious effort has gone into
raising the vocation to the level say of medicine, engineering, or
law.
Mr. Upton Sinclair speaks for a large body of opinion in
America, [Footnote: Mr. Hilaire Belloc makes practically the same
analysis for English newspapers. _Cf. The Free Press._] when he
claims that in what he calls "The Brass Check" he has found this
deeper reason:
"The Brass Check is found in your pay envelope every week--you who
write and print and distribute our newspapers and magazines. The Brass
check is the price of your shame--you who take the fair body of truth
and sell it in the market place, who betray the virgin hopes of
mankind into the loathsome brothel of Big Business." [Footnote: Upton
Sinclair, _The Brass Check. A Study of American Journalism._ p.
116.]
It would seem from this that there exists a body of known truth, and a
set of well founded hopes, which are prostituted by a more or less
conscious conspiracy of the rich owners of newspapers.
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