It is a complex and wonderful
creation. Every morning it is a mirror of the world, more or less
distorted and imperfect, but such a mirror as it never had held up to it
before. But consider how much space is taken up with mere trivialities
and vulgarities under the name of news. And this evil is likely to
continue and increase until news-gatherers learn that more important than
the reports of accidents and casualties is the intelligence of opinions
and thoughts, the moral and intellectual movements of modern life. A
horrible assassination in India is instantly telegraphed; but the
progress of such a vast movement as that of the Wahabee revival in Islam,
which may change the destiny of great provinces, never gets itself put
upon the wires. We hear promptly of a landslide in Switzerland, but only
very slowly of a political agitation that is changing the constitution of
the republic. It should be said, however, that the daily newspaper is not
alone responsible for this: it is what the age and the community where it
is published make it. So far as I have observed, the majority of the
readers in America peruses eagerly three columns about a mill between an
English and a naturalized American prize-fighter, but will only glance at
a column report of a debate in the English parliament which involves a
radical change in the whole policy of England; and devours a page about
the Chantilly races, while it ignores a paragraph concerning the
suppression of the Jesuit schools.
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