Upton Sinclair wrote
The Jungle which raised enough ruckus the Federal government began regulating the meatpacking industry.
The Brass Check: A Study of American Journalism is
The Jungle applied to journalism. Based upon Sinclair's own experiences with the press as a result of the noise he made muckraking meatpacking, he looked back at the Press from the wrong end of the microscope and documented relevent events as they happened. He investigated the press as they investigated him.
The Brass Check of the title refers to a system of whorehouse management in which the customer pays the house for services and receives a brass check, a token to give to the whore upstairs to indicate he's paid.
The Brass Check: A Study of American Journalism by Upton Sinclair
Arno Press and NYTimes, reprint edition 1970
originally self-published by the author in 1919
(31) ...the newspaper reviewers had set the rules of the game - that love and and beauty in art were heeded only in connection with personalities and sensation...
(42) Newspapermen are human, and cannot be blamed by their owners if now and then they yield to the temptation to publish the news.
(52) The Chicago Stop on the The Jungle Book Tour of 1908
Mind you, a little over a year before I had put Packingtown on the map of the world; I had made Packingtown and its methods the subject of discussion at the dinner-tables of many countries; and now I was coming back to Packingtown for the first time since that event. There was a big hall, jammed to the very doors with Stockyards workers. You will pardon me if I say that they made it clear that they were glad to have me come there. and to this uproarious audience I told the story of the "New York Herald" investigation [Editorial Comment: NYHerald commissioned then killed Packingtown a year after The Jungle story], and what had been discovered. I stood, looking into the faces of these working men and women, and said: "You are the people who know about these matters. Are they true?" There was a roar of assent that rocked the building. I said: I know they are true, and you know they are true. Now tell me this, ought they be made known to the American people? Would you like them to be made known to the American people?" And a again there was a roar of assent.
Then I looked over the edge of the platform to a row of tables, where sat the reporters looking up, and I talked to them for a while. I said: "You are newspaper men; you know a story when you see it. Tell me now - tell me straight - is not this a story?" The newspaper men nodded and grinned. they knew it was a "story" all right. "The public would like to read this - the public of Chicago and the public of all the rest of American - would they not?" And again the newspaper men nodded and grinned. "Now," said I, "play fair with me; give me a square deal, so far as you are concerned. Write this story just as I have told it tonight. Write it and turn it in and see what happens. Will you do that?" And they pledged themselves, the audience saw them pledge themselves. And so the test was made, as perfect a test as anyone could conceive. And next morning there was just one newspaper in Chicago which mentioned my speech in the Stockyards district - the "Chicago Socialist." Not one line in any other newspaper, morning or evening, in Chicago!
(63) The cynical newspaper editors, whose first maxim in life is that nothing can ever be changed...
(124) The thesis of this book is that our newspapers do not represent public interest, but private interests; they do not represent humanity, but property; they value a man, not because he is great, or good, or wise, or useful, but because he is wealthy, or of service to vested wealth.
(224) ...I assert there is no daily newspaper in America which does not represent and serve vested wealth and which has not for its ultimate aim the protection of economic privilege...
A capitalist newspaper may espouse this cause or that, it may make this pretense or that, but sooner or later you realize that a capitalist newspaper lives by the capitalist system, it fights for that system, and in the nature of the case cannot do otherwise. Some one has said that to talk of regulating capital is to talk of moralizing a tiger; I would say that to expect justice and truth-telling of a capitalist newspaper is to expect asceticism at a cannibal feast.
(236) ...maybe you feel proud about that, you like to be in the boat with the best fishermen - even though you are there as a fish.
(238) And if you go to the small town in Pennsylvania of Arkansas or Colorado, or wherever this paper is published, you find a country editor on the level of intelligence of the local horse-doctors of Englewood, New Jersey, and Tarrytown, New York whose proceedings I have described in this book. Frequently you find this editor hanging on by his eye-teeth, with a mortgage at the local bank, carried because of favors he does to the local money-power. You find him getting a regular monthly income from the copper-interests or the coal-interests or the lumber-interests, whatever happens to be dominant in that locality. You find him heavily subsidized at election -time by the two political machines of these great interests. His paper is used to print the speeches of the candidates of these interests and five or ten or fifty thousand copies of this particular issue are paid for by these interests and distributed at meetings. Campaign circulars and other literature are printed in the printing-office of this newspaper, and of course the public advertising appears in its columns - a graft which is found in every state and county of the Union, and is a means by which hundreds of millions of dollars are paid as a disguised subsidy by the interests which run our two-party political system.
(239) No, the editors of country and small-town newspapers are not giving their readers the truth about labor conditions in basic American industries. They know, as the phrase is, "which side their bread is buttered on," and they keep that side up with care. I have said that there are fortunes to be made by giving the news to the people; I must qualify the statement by explaining that it must be done on a large scale, and you must have capital to keep you going until you reach the people who can understand you. If you try it on a small scale, and without capital, you are crushed before you get your head out of the mud. And you know that, and govern yourself accordingly.
(241) The methods by which the "Empire of Business" maintains its control over Journalism are four: First, ownership of the papers; second, ownership of the owners; third, advertising subsidies; and fourth, direct bribery. By these methods there exists in America a control of news and of current comment more absolute than any monopoly in any other industry. This statement may sound extreme, but if you will think about it you will realize that in the very nature of the case it must be true. It does not destroy the steel trust if there are a few independent steel-makers, it does not destroy the money trust if there are a few independent men of wealth, but it does destroy the news trust if there is a single independent newspaper to let the cat out of the bag.
(248) A professional journalist may be defined as man who holds himself ready at a day's notice to adjust his opinions to the pocket-book of a new owner.
(259) A large part of what is called "conservatism" in our Journalism is this instinctive reverence for wealth, as deeply rooted in every American as respect for a duke in an English butler.
(408-409) The Mental Munition-Factory
A solution that comes at once to mind is state-owned or municipal-owned newspapers. This is the orthodox Socialist solution, and is also being advocated by Wiliam Jennings Bryan. Fortunately, we do not have to take his theories or anyone's theories; we have facts - the experience of Los Angeles with its public paper, the "Municipal News," which was an entire success. I inquire of the editor of the paper, Frank E. Wolfe, and he writes:
The "Municipal News"? There's a rich story buried there. It was established by an initiative ordinance, and had an ample appropriation. It was launched in the stream with engines going full stream ahead. its success was instantaneous. Free distribution; immense circulation; choked with high-class, high-rate advertising; well edited, and it was clean and immensely popular.
Otis said: "Every dollar that damned socialistic thing gets is a dollar out of the 'Times' till." Every publisher in the city re-echoed, and the fight was on. The chief thing that rankled, however, was the our growth of a clause in the ordinance which gave to each political party polling a three per cent vote a column in each issue for whatsoever purpose it might be used. The Socialist Labor Party nosed out the Prohibitionists by a fluke. The Socialists had a big margin in the preceding elections, so the Reds had two columns, and they were quick to seize the opportunity for propaganda. The Goo-goos, who had always stoutly denied they were apolitical party, came forward and claimed space, and the merry war was on. Those two columns for Socialist propaganda were the real cause for the daily onslaught of the painted ladies of Broadway (newspaper district of Los Angeles). There were three and three evening papers. Six times a day they whined, barked, yelped and snapped at the heels of the "Municipal News." Never were more lies poured out from the mouths of these mothers of falsehood. The little, weakly whelps of the pornographic press took up the hue and cry, and Blanche, Sweetheart and Tray were on the trail. Advertisers were cajoled, browbeaten and black mailed, until nearly all left the paper. The "News" was manned by a picked staff of the best newspaper men on the coast it was a clean, well edited, and gave both sides to all controversies - using the parallel column system. It covered the news of the municipality better than any paper had ever covered it. It was weak and ineffective editorially, for the policy was to print a newspaper. We did not indulge in a clothes-line quarrel - did not fight back.
The "News" died under the axe one year from its birth. They used the initiative to kill it. The rabble rallied to the cry, and we foresaw the end. The paper had attracted attention all over the English-reading world. everywhere I have gone I have been asked about it, by people who never dreamed I had been an editor of the paper. Its death was a triumph for reaction, but its effect will not die. Some day the idea will prevail, Then I might want to go back into the "game." [Editorial Comment: end of quote from Frank E. Wolfe, editor of the "Municipal News."]
City-owned newspapers are part of the solution, but not the whole part. As a Socialist, I advocate pubic ownership of the instruments and means of production; but I do not rely entirely upon that method where intellectual matters are concerned. I would have the sate make all the steel and coal and oil, the shoes and matches and sugar; I would have it do the distribution of newspapers, and perhaps even the printing; but for the editing of the newspapers I cast about for a method of control that allows free play to the development of initiative and the expression of personality.
In a free society the solution will be simple; there will be many groups and associations, publishing their own papers, and if you do not like the papers which these groups give you, you can form a group of your own. Being in receipt of the full product of your labor, you will have plenty of money, and will be surrounded by other free and independent individuals, also receiving the full product of their labor, and accustomed to combining for the expression of their ideas. The difference is that today the worlds' resources are in the hands of a class, and this class has a monopoly of self-expression. The problem of transferring such power to the people must be studied as the whole social problem, and not merely as the problem of the press.
(424-425) How all this works out, you may learn from the Syndicalist movement of Italy - only, of course, Capitalist Journalism has not allowed you to know anything about the Syndicalist movement of Italy! The glass-workers were beaten in a terrific strike, and they realized that they had to find a new weapon; they contributed their funds and bought a glass-factory, which they started upon a co-operative basis. When this factory had its product ready for sale, strikes were called on the other factories, by applying this method again and again, the union broke its rivals, and bought them out at a low price, and so before the war practically the entire glass-industry of Italy was in the hands of co-operative unions, and the glass-workers were getting the full value of their product.
The same thing was done before the war by the agricultural workers in Sicily. The strikers had been shot down by the soldiery, their own brothers and sons; they bought several estates and worked them co-operatively, and when harvest-time came there was labor for the co-operative estates, and there were strikes against the absentee landlords, who were spending their time in Paris and on the Riviera. So the landlords made haste to sell out, and the agricultural unions were rapidly taking possession of the land of Sicily.
(427) I cry to you that Journalism shall no longer be the thing described by Charles A Dana, master-cynic of the "New York Sun," "buying white paper at two cents a pound and selling it at ten cents a pound."
(438-439) A Practical Program
I propose that we shall found and endow a weekly publication of truth-telling, to be known as "The National News." This publication will carry no advertisements and no editorials. It will not be a journal of opinion, but a record of events pure and simple. It will be published on ordinary news-print paper, and in the cheapest possible form. it will have one purpose and one only, to give to the American people once every week the truth about the world's events. It will be strictly and absolutely nonpartisan, and never the propaganda organ of any cause. It will watch the country, and see where lies are being circulated and truth suppressed; its job will be to nail the lies, and bring the truth into the light of day. I believe that a sufficient number of Americans are awake to the dishonesty of our press to build up for such a paper a circulation of a million inside of a year.
Let me say at the outset that I am not looking for a job. I have my work, and it isn't editing a newspaper; nor do I judge myself capable of that rigid impartiality which such an enterprise would require. It is my idea that control of the paper should be vested in a board of directors, composed of twenty or thirty men and women of all creeds and causes, who have proven by their lifetime records that they believe in fair play.
(445) The "Federated Press" had its inception at a convention of the Labor Party in Chicago, November, 1919. It is a co-operative non-profit-making organization of working class newspapers, and maintains an admirable service of vital news from all over the world. It publishes a weekly four-page bulletin, which it will mail to you for five dollars a year, and which you will find worth the price many times over. The address of the "Federated Press" is 156 W. Washington Street, Chicago, Ill.