His name was John Swinton, and he was once the chief editorial writer for the New York Times and was serving as editorial writer for the New York Sun when he spoke these words to fellow journalists gathered at Manhattan’s Twilight Club on 12 April 1883:
There is no such thing in America as an independent press, unless it is in the country towns. You know it and I know it. There is not one of you who dare to write his honest opinions, and if you did you know beforehand they would never appear in print. I am paid $150 a week for keeping my honest opinions out of the paper I am connected with. Others of you are paid similar salaries for doing similar things. If I should permit honest opinions to be printed in one issue of my paper, like Othello, before twenty-four hours, my occupation would be gone.
The business of the New York journalist is to destroy the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to vilify, to fawn at the feet of Mammon, and to sell his race and his country for his daily bread. You know this and I know it, and what folly is this to be toasting an ‘independent press’! We are the tools and vassals of rich men behind the scenes. We are the jumping-jacks; they pull the strings and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities and our lives are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes.
The quotation is drawn from one of our favorite reference books, The Great Quotations, compiled by George Seldes and published way back in 1960. Sadly out of print, it put every other quotation anthology we’ve seen to shame. Our own copy is battered and falling apart, but much cherished.
eats shoots 'n leaves 