2110-19-8-1

Canadian Club. (Winnipeg) Dec. 1936

Public Opinion.

Let me define my subject. I mean public opinion which is free to form itself, and free to assert itself. Public opinion always rules, even under a tyranny. The worst tyranny in history could not have existed for one day unless public opinion had at any rate acquiesced in it. But, the public opinion I want to speak of today is that which is found in a free democracy, and which has some continuing means of influencing the government of the country. This is indeed the only real definition of a democracy, as President Wilson used to declare. Democratic government does not depend upon any particular form of constitution. We in Britain have been far too inclined in the past, I think, arbitrarily, to identify it with our special kind of parliamentarianism. But it does depend upon the people being able, when its mind is clear, to direct the course of government. This was Edmund Burke's great doctrine, that the people might be foolish in small things, but in any great question, which profoundly moved them, they were generally right. Some of us realised last December quite suddenly that Britain really was a democracy, when a powerful Government with a large majority, fresh from a General Election, was compelled by an up-rush of popular opinion completely to alter its foreign policy. I suspect that future historians will regard as a keypoint in contemporary history.

I want to talk to you today about what makes public opinion. There are, of course, speeches in Parliament, but except in one or two papers

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the proceedings in Parliament are not very fully reported, and I doubt if these reports have much influence upon popular thought. Then there are speeches of Members of Parliament and statesmen up and down the country. But in Britain at any rate we are not very good at listening to speeches, as compared with our fathers, and political meetings are pretty badly attended. I am inclined to think that, apart from books, which now and then exercise a real influence , the two main formative agents are the press and the radio.

Now, first for the press. I think that in the last decade or two a great change has come over journalism. Once upon a time men took their opinions docilely from their favourite newspaper. A man was loyal to his paper, as he is to his club and his particular brand of tobacco. Editorials in those days did make opinion, and an editor wielded more power than most Cabinet Ministers. But there came a time, with the advent of big popular newspaper groups under one management, when newspapers begam to make claims too extravagant for the natural man to accept. That kind of paper took to crying "Wolfe, wolf!" so habitually that we stopped being alarmed by it, with the result that today the old newspaper of opinion is pretty rare. I think that in Britain the editors of, say, "The Times" have still a real influence on thought, but in most papers the editorials are less important than the advertisements. There was a time not so long ago when the most popular papers in Britain with one voice abused Mr. Baldwin, and to their amazement discovered that they had only succeeded in increasing Mr. Baldwin's popularity.

What matters today in the papers is news - facts. Their

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power lies not in the deductions that editors draw from the facts they print, but from the way they present that news. Editorially a great deal can be done in the way of influencing opinion by a paper which cleverly groups its news, or omits news which works against its pet views. I do not mean that editors distort news; that would be bad policy and -would be soon found out; but that they can group it and present it so as to lead inevitably to a certain deduction. To take an extreme case:- a paper can report that a Cabinet Minister fell asleep at a public dinner - which he did - in such a way as to suggest that he was intoxicated - which he was not.

The running of a newspaper, therefore, vrould seem to be a much simpler game than in the past. But the newspaper is no longer without its rivals, and the most formidable of these is the radio.

At present in England there is an agreement by which the spheres of the press and of wireless are delimited, and in order not to damage the newspaper, wireless news can only be issued at certain definite hours.

When the bulk of the people have got wireless sets they will be able to ask for, and to get, what they want. I can imagine a state of things under which radio would prove a most formidable competitor to the newspapers. I can imagine a steady trickle of news in every household - probably taken down mechanically, so that in the place of buying special editions of papers, we should have a mimeographed newsheet twenty times a day. Moreover, radio is not merely providing news, it is providing comment, and interpretation and opinion, the kind of things that the old editorials gave - and providing it apparently to the popular satisfaction. If radio were, therefore, in a

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position to tell us everything that happened from hour to hour, and to have experts expounding its significance, what function would be left to the press? Not racing and sporting news, or market quotations, for radio can give those better and quicker than any paper. Nothing would be left but advertisements, and that seems a rather flimsy foundation for the future of the press. A friend of mine the other day announced his intention of selling every newspaper share he possessed and buying Canadian mining shares. I thought his view an extreme one, but there is a certain surface justification.

Of course, things will never come to such a crisis. There is ample room in our society for both methods of popular illumination. In our traditional fashion we are certain to find kind of compromise. But it is interesting to speculate on just what form this compromise would take.

The subject matter of a newspaper and of radio is the same, and may be divided into news and comment on news - that is opinion. But opinion may take two forms. It may be advice on policy, such as we found in the old Editorial. It may be special descriptive articles amplifying and explaining news and relating to world interest. It may be a special personal statement of some notable expert, or of some public man whose mental processes interest the whole community. At present, I think, we may say that the mere news fact is the staple of the papers. It is that which sells special editions - sensational foreign doings, the results of sporting contests, betting news, market quotations, oddments of personal gossip. Now I am inclined to think that here the radio is a deadly competitor, for it can, if it likes, give news faster than the newspaper. What is left,

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therefore, to the newspaper besides advertisements? Special features, of course, in a certain type of paper, and opinion.

I seem to see signs of opinion reviving in the British press, on which alone I can speak with some knowledge, not so much in the shape of anonymous editorials as in the shape of special signed articles by acknowledged experts, as is the custom in France. It is not the view of the leader-writer today which we value so mucha ss the view of an eminent man on some topical question, who is brought in to write at a high fee. But there is a difference in the effect of this kind of opinion. It is no longer the view of teh newspaper that mysterious and anonymous thing, which counts, but the view of Mr. A., or General B., or the Bishop of C., whose name is placarded everywhere.

You may say that the radio can do this kind of thing just the same as the press, except for photographs - and that will presently come with television. You can hire all these eminent people to broadcast their views just as the newspapers hire them to write them. Yes, but there a distinction comes in. The mere news fact is just as satisfactory to hear as to read. But when it comes to opinion I cannot help thinking that it is far better read than heard. It seems to me that the more broadcasting specialises on opinion as well as news, the more it whets the appetite of the public for such opinion, the more it will fling the public back on the newspapers. A man likes to read a careful statement of views at his leisure. He may want to re-read it in part of in whole, and he cannot get the wireless to repeat it.

Therefore I suggest to you that one effect of broadcasting