A Window in Fleet Street

New Zealand Listener, Volume 37, Issue 940, 16 August 1957, Page 16

A Window in Fleet Street

DANGEROUS ESTATE: The Anatomy of Newspapers, by Francis Williams; Longmans, Green and Co., English price 24/-.

(Reviewed by

A.

M.

F this is not the best history of the British press, it must be one of the best. It is exceptionally valuable for its mass of wellmarshalled facts, its insight into requirements and varying tastes, its broad sympathies combined with exposition of ideals and its fearless and incisive comment. As ecitor of the Daily Herald, Mr Williams pushed the circulation above two millions; he held high information positions in the last war and was decorated by Britain and America; and he has been a governor of the BBC. Briefly, his argument is that newspapers and publics change but not the Principles of the profession or trade. To Succeed a newspaper must entertain as well as instruct, as giants of the very early days like Addison and Steele clearly recognised. A popular journalist must be related to Barnum on one side and Delane on the other. Yet the history of newspapers and periodicals is étrewn with wrecks caused by disregard of this truth, and of the accompanying one that finance, which comes mainly from advertising, must be assured. The purveyance of gossip, vice and crime is as old as journalism. By nature governments are disposed to be restrictive of the press. A hundred and fifty years ago the British press had to fight for free-

dom against a ruling class that feared its influence on the populace. Even The Times took government bribes at first. Far into the 19th century this cistrust of the "lower orders’ was shared by some editors. Last year, 1956, the International Press Institute listed 42 countries in what is loosely called the free world, as reporting attempts to control or intimidate the press by various means. Newnes and Northcliffe found and served the new board-school public, and mass production journalism resulted. Mr Williams is critically sympathetic to this development, and very severe on the Morley-Spender school of editors who catered for a small, well-educated class. By not widening the conception of news, they left this necessary service to men of lower ideals, and were thereby guilty (he uses the very phrase) of what the French call "the treason of the learned." He finds value in the tabloids, but also Says it is a British myth to believe that American journalism can _ rival British "in the exploitation of the sensational and the frivolous." He traces the newspaper war in colourful detail, including the absurd bribing of readers with gifts until everything, "hardly excluding the household sink," was thrown in, and he shows how ownership has been shaped. There’ are brilliant penpictures of Northcliffe, Beaverbrook and others. Beaverbrook is a "superb popular newspaper impressario," but the personal "smears" in his papers are too crude, "the vendettas too many and too obvious." "This is Teddy Boy politics."

The outlook for the British press, newspaper and periodical, has worsened since this book was published, and might be called grave. Rising costs and linked control threaten independence. The British read more copies of newspapers than any other people, but there are countries where there are more papers to. choose from. The number of publications has fallen alarmifigly, and the decline continues. "The journalistic tragedy of our time is that the risk of trying something new is too great to be taken."

The brightest feature is that readers of "quality" papers have been increasing absolutely and in relation to total readership. Great papers, says Mr Williams, are made by great editors, not by proprietors. He discusses the independence of the editor and encs with a fine exposition of the journalists’s responsibility. This, he says, is no less than the lawyer’s or the doctor’s, It might be added that he can do much more harm than either of the others. .