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3.

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