Editors have grown very much too lax in this respect. The old
editor used dimly to regard himself as an unofficial public servant for
the transmitting of public news. If he suppressed anything, he was
supposed to have some special reason for doing so; as that the material
was actually libellous or literally indecent. But the modern editor
regards himself far too much as a kind of original artist, who can
select and suppress facts with the arbitrary ease of a poet or a
caricaturist. He "makes up" the paper as man "makes up" a fairy tale, he
considers his newspaper solely as a work of art, meant to give pleasure,
not to give news. He puts in this one letter because he thinks it
clever. He puts in these three or four letters because he thinks them
silly. He suppresses this article because he thinks it wrong. He
suppresses this other and more dangerous article because he thinks it
right. The old idea that he is simply a mode of the expression of the
public, an "organ" of opinion, seems to have entirely vanished from his
mind. To-day the editor is not only the organ, but the man who plays on
the organ. For in all our modern movements we move away from Democracy.
This is the whole danger of our time.
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