d the most ambitious.

How did such a catastrophe come about? That is what we must inquire
into before going further to examine its operation and the possible
remedy.

VI

During all this development of the Press there has been present,
_first_, as a doctrine plausible and arguable; _next_, as a tradition
no longer in touch with reality; _lastly_, as an hypocrisy still
pleading truth, a certain definition of the functions of the Press; a
doctrine which we must thoroughly grasp before proceeding to the
nature of the Press in these our present times.

This doctrine was that the Press was an _organ of opinion_--that is,
an expression of the public thought and will.

Why was this doctrine originally what I have called it, "plausible and
arguable"? At first sight it would seem to be neither the one nor the
other.

A man controlling a newspaper can print any folly or falsehood he
likes. _He_ is the dictator: not his public. _They_ only receive.

Yes: but he is limited by his public.

If I am rich enough to set up a big rotary printing press and print in
a million copies of a daily paper the _news_ that the Pope has become
a Methodist, or the _opinion_ that tin-tacks make a very good
breakfast food, my newspaper containing such news and such an opinion
would obviously not touch the general thought and will at all. No
one, outside the small catholic minority, wants to hear about the
Pope; and no one, Catholic or Muslim, will believe that he has become
a Methodist. No one alive will consent to eat tin-tacks. A paper
printing stuff like that is free to do so, the proprietor could
certainly get his employees, or most of them, to write as he told
them. But his paper would stop selling.

It is perfectly clear that the Press in itself simply represents the
news which its owners desire to print and the opinions which they
desire to propagate; and this argument against the Press has always
been used by those who are opposed to its influence at any moment.

But there is no smoke without fire, and the element of truth in the
legend that the Press "represents" opinion lies in this, that there is
a _limit_ of outrageous contradiction to known truths beyond which it
cannot go without heavy financial loss through failure of circulation,
which is synonymous with failure of power. When people talked of the
newspaper owners as "representing public opinion" there was a shadow
of reality in such talk, absurd as it seems to us