Friday, September 9, 2011

GKC On Journalism

When you read the following quotes, you will be compelled to declare Chesterton a genius...and you will be right.  You may also be tempted to declare how "far ahead of the times" he was in his perceptions.  Here you will be wrong.  You see, it's not that Chesterton anticipated what WOULD BE...he recognized and defined what already WAS.  

Though we are prone to think all of life is so very much worse than it has ever been, the fact is, human nature was human 50 years ago, 280 years ago, and 3000 years ago.  If Chesterton's words are still applicable today (and they are!), then it is not so much because he was prophetic as he was awake.  Men will be men in every age.  

Sorry...I'll quit now.  The point of the post was to share Chesterton's words, not mine!

We may concede that politicians have done something towards degrading journalism.  It was not entirely done by us, the journalists.  But most of it was.  It was mostly the fruit of our first and most natural sin -- the habit of regarding ourselves as conjurers rather than priests, for the definition is that a conjurer is apart from his audience, while a priest is a part of his.  The conjurer despises his congregation; if the priest despises anyone, it must be himself.  The curse of all journalism, but especially of that yellow journalism which is the shame of our profession, is that we think ourselves cleverer than the people for whom we write, whereas, in fact, we are even stupider.  Journalism is popular, but it is popular mainly as fiction.  Life is one world, and life seen in the newspapers another; the public enjoys both, but it is more or less conscious of the difference...But the people know in their hearts that journalism is a conventional art like any other, that it selects, heightens, and falsifies.  Only its Nemesis is the same as that of other arts: if it loses all care for truth it loses all form likewise.  --GKC, All Things Considered

It is the one great weakness of journalism as a picture of our modern existence, that it must be a picture made up entirely of exceptions.  We announce on flaring posters that a man has fallen off a scaffolding.  We do not announce on flaring posters that a man has not fallen off a scaffolding.  Yet this latter fact is fundamentally more exciting, as indicating that that moving tower of mystery, a man, is still abroad upon the earth.  That the man has not fallen off a scaffolding is really more sensational, and it is also some thousand times more common.  But journalism cannot reasonably be expected thus to insist upon the permanent miracles.  Busy editors cannot be expected to put on their posters, "Mr. Wilkinson Still Safe," or "Mr. Jones, of Worthing, Not Dead Yet."  They cannot announce the happiness of mankind at all.  They cannot describe all the forks that are not stolen, or all the marriages that are not judiciously dissolved.  Hence the complete picture they give of life is of necessity fallacious; they can only represent what is unusual.  However democratic they may be, they are only concerned with the minority." --GKC, The Ball and the Cross

There is another case of the thing that I mean.  Why on earth do the newspapers, in describing a dynamite outrage or any other political assassination, call it a "dastardly outrage" or a "cowardly outrage"?  It is perfectly evident that it is not dastardly in the least.  It is perfectly evident that it is about as cowardly as the Christians going to the lions.  The man who does it exposes himself to the chance of being torn in pieces by two thousand people.  What the thing is, is not cowardly, but profoundly and detestably wicked.  The man who does it is very infamous and brave.  But, again, the explanation is that our modern press would rather appeal to physical arrogance, or to anything, rather than appeal to right and wrong."  --GKC, All Things Considered

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