But the modern editor regards himself far too much as a kind of original
artist, who can select and suppress facts with the arbitrary ease of a
poet or a caricaturist. He "makes up" the paper as man "makes up" a
fairy tale, he considers his newspaper solely as a work of art, meant to
give pleasure, not to give news. He puts in this one letter because he
thinks it clever. He puts in these three or four letters because he
thinks them silly. He suppresses this article because he thinks it
wrong. He suppresses this other and more dangerous article because he
thinks it right. The old idea that he is simply a mode of the expression
of the public, an "organ" of opinion, seems to have entirely vanished
from his mind. To-day the editor is not only the organ, but the man who
plays on the organ. For in all our modern movements we move away from
Democracy.
This is the whole danger of our time. There is a
difference between the oppression which has been too common in the past
and the oppression which seems only too probable in the future.
Oppression in the past, has commonly been an individual matter. The
oppressors were as simple as the oppressed, and as lonely. The
aristocrat sometimes hated his inferiors; he always hated his equals.
The plutocrat was an individualist. But in our time even the plutocrat
has become a Socialist. They have science and combination, and may
easily inaugurate a much greater tyranny than the world has ever seen.
-All Things Considered (1908)
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