the interaction of public opinion with the forces that help to make it
the public and the press, or for that matter, the public and any force that modifies public opinion, interact. action and interaction are continually going on between the forces projected out to the public and the public itself. the public relations counsel must understand this fact in its broadest and most detailed implications. he must understand not only what these various forces are, but he must be able to evaluate their relative powers with fair accuracy. let us consider again the case of a newspaper, as representative of other mediums of communication.
“we print,” says the new york times, “all the news that’s fit to print.” immediately the question arises (as elmer davis, the historian of the times tells us that it did when the motto was first adopted) what news is fit to print? by what standard is the editorial decision reached which includes one kind of news and excludes another kind? the times itself has not been, in its long
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and conspicuously successful career, entirely free from difficulties on this point.
thus in “the history of the new york times,” mr. davis feels the need for justifying the extent to which that paper featured theodore tilton’s action against the rev. henry ward beecher for alienation of mrs. tilton’s affections and his conduct with her. mr. davis says (pages 124-125): “no doubt a good many readers of the times thought that the paper was giving an undue amount of space to this chronicle of sin and suffering. those complaints come in often enough even in these days from readers who appreciate the paper’s general reluctance to display news of this sort, and wonder why a good general rule should occasionally be violated. but there was a reason in the beecher case, as there has usually been a reason in similar affairs since. dr. beecher was one of the most prominent clergymen in the country; there was a natural curiosity as to whether he was practicing what he preached. one of the counsel at the trial declared that ‘all christendom was hanging on its outcome.’ full reporting of its course was not a mere pandering to vulgar curiosity, but a recognition of the value of the case as news.”
the simple fact that such a slogan can exist and be accepted is for our purpose an important point. somewhere there must be a standard to
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which the editors of the times can conform, as well as a large clientele of constant readers to whom that standard is satisfactory. “fit” must be defined by the editors of the times in a way which meets with the approval of enough persons to enable the paper to maintain its reading public. as soon, however, as the definition is attempted, difficulties arise.
professor w. g. bleyer, in an article in his book on journalism, first stresses the importance of completeness in the news columns of a paper, then goes on to say that “the only important limitations to completeness are those imposed by the commonly accepted ideas of decency embodied in the words, ‘all the news that’s fit to print’ and by the rights of privacy. carefully edited newspapers discriminate between what the public is entitled to know and what an individual has a right to keep private.”
on the other hand, when professor bleyer attempts to define what news is fit to print and what the public is entitled to know, he discusses generalizations capable of wide and frequently inconsistent interpretation. “news,” says he, “is anything timely which is significant to newspaper readers in their relations to the community, the state and the nation.”
who is to determine what is significant and what is not? who is to decide which of the individual’s
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relations to the community are safeguarded by his right of privacy and which are not? such a definition tells us nothing more definite than does the slogan which it attempts to define. we must look further for a standard by which these definitions are applied. there must be a consensus of public opinion on which the newspaper falls back for its standards.
the truth is that while it appears to be forming the public opinion on fundamental matters, the press is often conforming to it.
it is the office of the public relations counsel to determine the interaction between the public, and the press and the other mediums affecting public opinion. it is as important to conform to the standards of the organ which projects ideas as it is to present to this organ such ideas as will conform to the fundamental understanding and appreciation of the public to which they are ultimately to appeal. there is as much truth in the proposition that the public leads institutions as in the contrary proposition that the institutions lead the public.
as an illustration of the manner in which newspapers are inclined to accept the judgments of their readers in presenting material to them, we have this anecdote which rollo ogden tells in the atlantic monthly for july, 1906, about a
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letter which wendell phillips wished to have published in a boston paper.
“the editor read it over, and said, ‘mr. phillips, that is a very good and interesting letter, and i shall be glad to publish it; but i wish you would consent to strike out the last paragraph.’
“‘why,’ said phillips, ‘that paragraph is the precise thing for which i wrote the whole letter. without that it would be pointless.’
“‘oh, i see that,’ replied the editor; ‘and what you say is perfectly true! i fully agree with it all myself. yet it is one of those things which it will not do to say publicly. however, if you insist upon it, i will publish it as it stands.’
“it was published the next morning, and along with it a short editorial reference to it, saying that a letter from mr. phillips would be found in another column, and that it was extraordinary that so keen a mind as his should have fallen into the palpable absurdity contained in the last paragraph.”
recognition of this fact comes from a number of different sources. h. l. mencken recognizes that the public runs the press as much as the press runs the public.
“the primary aim of all of them,” says mr. mencken,8 “not less when they play the secular
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iokanaan than when they play the mere newsmonger, was to please the crowd, and to give a good show; and the way they set about giving that good show was by first selecting a deserving victim, and then putting him magnificently to the torture.
“this was their method when they were performing for their own profit only, when their one motive was to make the public read their paper; but it was still their motive when they were battling bravely and unselfishly for the public good, and so discharging the highest duty of their profession.”
there are interesting, if somewhat obscure, examples of the complementary working of various forces. in the field of the motion pictures, for example, the producers, the actors and the press, in their support, have continually waged a battle against censorship. undoubtedly censorship of the motion pictures is in its practical workings an economic and artistic handicap. censorship, however, will continue in spite of the producers as long as there is a willingness on the part of the public to accept this censorship. the public, on the whole, has refused to join the fight against censorship, because there is a more or less articulate belief that children, if not women, should be protected from seeing shocking sights, such as murders visibly enacted, the taking of
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drugs, immoralities and other acts which might offend or suggest harmful imitation.
“damaged goods,” before its presentation to america in 1913, was analyzed by the public relations counsel, who helped to produce the play. he recognized that unless that part of the public sentiment which believed in education and truth could be lifted from that part of public opinion which condemned the mentioning of sex matters, “damaged goods” would fail. the producers, therefore, did not try to educate the public by presenting this play as such, but allowed group leaders and groups interested in education to come to the support of brieux’s drama and, in a sense, to sponsor the production.
proof that the public and the institutions that make public opinion interact is shown in instances in which books were stifled because of popular disapproval at one time and then brought forward by popular demand at a later time when public opinion had altered. religious and very early scientific works are among such books.
a more recent instance is the announcement made by judge, a weekly magazine, that it would support the fight for light wine and beer. judge took this stand because it believed in the principle of personal freedom and also because it deemed that public sentiment was in favor of light wine and beer as a substitute for absolute
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prohibition. judge believed its stand would please its readers.
presumably writing of newspaper morality, mr. mencken, in his article just quoted, finds at the end of it that he has “written of popular morality very copiously, and of newspaper morality very little.
“but,” says mr. mencken, “as i have said before, the one is the other. the newspaper must adapt its pleading to its clients’ moral limitation just as the trial lawyer also must adapt his pleading to the jury’s limitations. neither may like the job, but both must face it to gain the larger end.”
writing on the other hand from the point of view of the man who feels that the public taste requires no justification, ralph pulitzer nevertheless agrees with mr. mencken that the opinion of the press is set by the public; and he justifies “muckraking”9 by finding it neither “extraordinary nor culpable that people and press should be more interested in the polemical than in the platitudinous; in blame than in painting the lily; in attack than in sending laudatory coals to newcastle.”
even mr. leupp10 concludes that “whatever
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we may say of the modern press on its less commendable side, we are bound to admit that newspapers, like governments, fairly reflect the people they serve. charles dudley warner once went so far as to say that no matter how objectionable the character of a paper may be, it is always a trifle better than the patrons on whom it relies for its support.”
similarly, from an unusually wide experience on a paper as highly considered, perhaps, as any in america, rollo ogden claims this give and take between the public and the press is vital to a just conception of american journalism.
“the editor does not nonchalantly project his thoughts into the void. he listens for the echo of his words. his relation to his supporters is not unlike gladstone’s definition of the intimate connection between the orator and his audience. as the speaker gets from his hearers in mist what he gives back in shower, so the newspaper receives from the public as well as gives to it. too often it gets as dust what it gives back as mud; but that does not alter the relation. action and reaction are all the while going on between the press and its patrons. hence it follows that the responsibility for the more crying evils of journalism must be divided.”11
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the same interaction goes on in connection with all the other forces that mould public opinion. the preacher upholds the ideals of society. he leads his flock whither they indicate a willingness to be led. ibsen creates a revolution when society is ripe for it. the public responds to finer music and better motion pictures and demands improvements. “give the people what they want” is only half sound. what they want and what they get are fused by some mysterious alchemy. the press, the lecturer, the screen and the public lead and are led by each other.
