London was the cable and news
center, and it was there that a certain technic for reporting the war
was evolved. Something similar occurred in the reporting of the
Russian Revolution. In that instance, access to Russia was closed by
military censorship, both Russian and Allied, and closed still more
effectively by the difficulties of the Russian language. But above all
it was closed to effective news reporting by the fact that the hardest
thing to report is chaos, even though it is an evolving chaos. This
put the formulating of Russian news at its source in Helsingfors,
Stockholm, Geneva, Paris and London, into the hands of censors and
propagandists. They were for a long time subject to no check of any
kind. Until they had made themselves ridiculous they created, let us
admit, out of some genuine aspects of the huge Russian maelstrom, a
set of stereotypes so evocative of hate and fear, that the very best
instinct of journalism, its desire to go and see and tell, was for a
long time crushed. [Footnote: _Cf. A Test of the News,_ by Walter
Lippmann and Charles Merz, assisted by Faye Lippmann, _New
Republic,_ August 4, 1920.]
5
Every newspaper when it reaches the reader is the result of a whole
series of selections as to what items shall be printed, in what
position they shall be printed, how much space each shall occupy, what
emphasis each shall have. There are no objective standards here.
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