The Free Press

ition no longer in touch with reality; lastly, as an hypocrisy still pleading truth, a certain definition of the functions of

an organ of opinion-that is, an expre

ed it, "plausible and arguable"? At first sight i

y folly or falsehood he likes. He is the d

is limited b

ing 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

s desire to print and the opinions which they desire to propagate; and this argument agai

rculation, 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 to-day. Though the doctrine that newspapers are "organs of public op

an be taken in. A newspaper can manufacture interest, but there are certain broad currents in human affairs which neither a newspaper proprietor nor any other human being can control. If England is at war no newspaper can boyc

ver garbled or truncated or falsified, it at least dealt with interesting matters which the newspaper proprietors had not started as a hare of the

ficiality of the news side of the Press; which i

a certain limit of

g issues." It can boycott very successfully, and does so, with complete p

t must in some degree (and that a large degree) present real matter for observation and debate. It

eady been reached; but that is a mat