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University Daily Kansan
Tuesday, Oct. 15, 1963
Revilations, Revelations--and a few Bouquets
Newspapers have been reviled and reversed throughout their history, and no doubt there is justification in both the bouquets and the brickbats which have been thrown our way. Below are printed some of the reasons famous people gave for whatever stand they took.
All these comments are reprinted because this is National Newspaper Week, a Week when newspapers continue publication just as if nothing had happened and the rest of the citizenry wonders what National Newspaper Week is.
In terms of celebration, nothing.
In terms of honoring a longtime resident of almost every community in America, a little more.
No one has ever thought of a way to replace the newspaper. It brings to almost every home in America the news. It provides information no one can get for himself, and that aren't provided by television and radio — births and deaths, weddings, hospital news, farm news, even the little personales, in the country papers, about Mr. and Mrs. Jones visiting Mr. and Mrs. Brown.
Newspapers, however, are taken for granted.
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But as the slogan says, "Newspapers make a BIG difference in our lives."
They are sort of assassins who sit with loaded blunder-busses at the corner of streets and fire them off for hire or for sport at any passenger they select.—John Quincy Adams, Diary, 18280.
Newspapers are the schoolmasters of the common people. That endless book, the newspaper, is our national glory—Henry Ward Beecher (18813-1887, Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit: The Press
Harmony seldom makes a headline.-Silas Bent, Strange Bedfellows, 1928.
The Press is not public opinion.—Otto von Bismarck, speech in the Prussian Lower House, 1862
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The liberty of the press is indeed essential to the nature of a free state, but this consists in laying no previous restraints upon publications, and not in freedom from censure for criminal matter when published. William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England, Bk. IV, Vol. II, 1765
There have been three silent revolutions in England: first, when the professions fell off from the church; secondly, when literature fell off from the professions; and thirdly, when the press fell off from literature.—S. T. Coleridge, Table Talk, 1832
Journalism consists in buying white paper at two cents a pound and selling it at ten cents a pound.—Charles A, Dana (1819-1879)
Your newspapers will never become great until they cease to be personal organs. —Charles Dickens (1812-1870), letter to Horace Greeley
I hate to be defended in a newspaper. As long as all that is said, is said against me, I feel a certain assurance of success. But as soon as honeyed words of praise are spoken for me, I feel as one that lies unprotected before his enemies.—Ralph Waldo Emerson, Compensation, 1841
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It is unreasonable what some assert, "that printers ought not to print anything but what they approve"; since if all of that business should make such a resolution, and abide by it, an end would thereby be put to free writing, and the world would afterwards have nothing to read but what happened to be the opinions of printers. Benjamin Franklin, An Apology for Pinters, 1731
It is clear that the press is itself in a sort of dilemma; it
can cease neither to be big business nor to judge big business. From this point of view, the stock complaint that the American press voices a dominantly "capitalistic" outlook is less a criticism than a truism.-William Ernest Hocking, Freedom of the Press, a report from the Commission on Freedom of the Press, p. 146, 1947
No government ought to be without censors; and where the press is free none ever will. Thomas Jefferson, Writings, Vol. VIII, p. 406, 1799
A newswriter is a man without virtue, who writes lies at home for his own profit. To these compositions is required neither genius nor knowledge, neither industry nor sprightiness but contempt of shame and difference to truth are absolutely necessary. — Samuel Johnson, The Idler, 1758
The liberty of the press is the palladium of all the civil, political, and religious rights of an Englishman.—Junius, Letters of Junius, 1772
If a man makes money by publishing a newspaper, by poisoning the wells of information, by feeding the people a daily spiritual death, he is the greatest criminal I can conceive. —Ferdinan Lasalle, speech in Dusseldorf, 1863
"Would You Repeat That, Sir? The Afternoon Bomb Explosion Jarred The Microphone A Little"
Why should freedom of speech and freedom of the press be allowed? Why should a government which is doing what it believes to be right allow itself to be criticized? It would not allow opposition by lethal weapons. Ideas are much more fatal things than guns. Why should any man be allowed to buy a printing press and disseminate pernicious opinions calculated to embarrass the government?—Nikoali Lenin, speech in Moscow, 1920
There has never lived, and there never will be born, a man wise enough and good enough to be entrusted with the irresponsible power over human thought, and the action which follows thought, which ownership of many newspapers conveys in the modern world, and the freedom to exercise it in the service of his own interests. To say that his interests might also be those of the community is to say something which might periodically be true, but cannot be generally true. It is to forget human pride and human weakness and to break with history.-Wilmott Lewis, speech in New York, 1936
The freedom of the press is one of the great bulwarks of liberty and can never be restrained but by despotic governments. George Mason, The Virginia Declaration of Rights, see XII, 1776
entrusted to them, the people cannot profit by the power of choosing them, and the advantages of good government are unattainable. It will not surely cost many words to satisfy all classes of readers that, without the free and unrestrained use of the press, the requisite knowledge cannot be obtained. James Mill, On Liberty of the Press, 1821.
... All successful newspapers are ceaselessly querulous and bellicose. They never defend anyone or anything if they can help it; if the job is forced upon them, they tackle it by denouncing some one or something else.
—H. L. Mencken, Prejudices, First Series, Ch. 13, p. 1880, 1919
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Three hostile newspapers are more to be feared than a thousand bayonets. Napoleon I (1769-1821), Sayings of Napoleon
Without the knowledge of what is done by their representatives, in the use of the powers
Newspapers are read at the breakfast and dinner tables. God's great gift to man is appetite. Put nothing in the paper that will destroy it.—W. R. Nelson, 1841-1915), publisher of the Kansas City Star
(Editor's Note: The late Colonel Nelson weighed about 300 pounds).
The penny-papers of New York do more to govern this country than the White House at Washington.—Wendell Phillips (1811-1894, Address: The Press
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The liberty of thinking and of publishing whatever one likes . . . is the fountainhead of many evils.—Pope Leo XIII, Immortale Dei, 1885
Editors should be willing to respect and help and even sit at the feet of those schools which increasingly have serious purpose and real scholarship, for it is not true that, because college journalism has faults, it has no value. As well say the same thing about all higher education. —Keen Rafferty, "How Not to Become a Cliche Expert," Saturday Review of Literature, Sept. 8, 1945, p. 17
The newspaper is of necessity something of a monopoly, and its first duty is to shun the temptations of monopoly. Its primary office is the gathering of news. At the peril of its soul it must see that the supply is not tainted. Neither in what it gives, nor in what it does not give, nor in the mode of presentation, must the unclouded face of truth suffer wrong. Comment is free but facts are sacred. C. P. Scott. The Manchester Guardian, 1926
The newspaper! Sir, they are
the most villanous—licentious—abominable—infernal—not that I ever read them—no-I make it a rule never to look into a newspaper.-R. B. Sheridan, The Critic, Act.I,Sc.1, 1779
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Not more than two newspapers will be published in Savannah; their editors and proprietors will be held to the strictest accountability, and will be punished severely, in person and property, for any libelous publication, mischievous matter, premature news, exaggerated statements, or any comments whatever upon the acts of the constituted authorities. Gen. W. T. Sherman, special field order on occupying Savannah, 1864
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It is a newspaper's duty to print the news, and raise hell.— Wilbur Storey, statement of the aims of the Chicago Times, 1861
Ah, ye knights of the pen! May honour be your shield, and truth tip your lances! Be gentle to all gentle people. Be modest to women. Be tender to children. And as for the Ogre Humbug, out sword, and have at him. Thackeray, Roundabout Papers: "Ogres." 1862
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Blessed are they who never read a newspaper, for they shall see Nature, and, through her, God. — Thoreau (1817-1862), Essays and Other Writings,—p. 254
I have been reading the morning paper. I do it every morning—well knowing that I shall find in it the usual deprivatives and baseness and hypocrisies and cruelties that make up civilization, and cause me to put in the rest of the day pleading for the damnation of the human race.—Mark Twain, letter to W. D. Howells, 1899
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As for modern journalism, it is not my business to defend it. It justifies its own existence by the great Darwinian principle of the survival of the vulgarest. Oscar Wilde, "The Critic as an Artist," Intentions, 1894
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In centuries before ours the public nailed the ears of journalists to the pump. That was quite hideous. In this century journalists have nailed their own ears to the key-hole—Oscar Wilde, "The Soul of Man Under Socialism," 1891
Dailij Känsan
111 Flint Hall
University of Kansas student newspaper
University of Kansas student loca
UNiversity 4-3646, newsroom
UNiversity 4-3198, business office
Member Inland Daily Press Association, Associated Collegiate Press.
Represented by National Advertising Service, 18 East 50 St., New York 22,
N.Y. News service: United Press International. Mail subscription rates:
$3 a semester or $5 a year. Published in Lawrence, Kan., every afternoon during the University year except Saturdays and Sundays, University holidays, and examination periods. Second class postage paid at Lawrence, Kansas.
Founded 1889, became biweekly 1904, triweekly 1908, daily Jan. 10, 1912.
NEWS DEPARTMENT
Mike Miller ... Managing Editor
Terry Ostmeyer, Trudy Meserve, Jackie Stern, Rose Osborne, Assistant
Managing Editors; Kay Jarves, City Editor; Linda Machin, Society Editor;
Roy Miller, Sports Editor; Dennis Bowers, Picture Editor.
EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT
Blaine King Editorial Editor
BUSINESS DEPARTMENT
Business Manager
Bob Brooks ... Business Manager
Joanne Zabornik, Advertising Mgr.; Alice Rueschhoff, Circulation Mgr;
Brooks Harrison, Classified Adv. Mgr.; Jim Evilsizer, National Adv.
Mgr.; Donald Dugan, Promotion Mgr.; Jerry Schroepfer, Merchandising
Mgr.