Editorial: The Misreporters of the Capitalist Press. (1945)

Editorial from the June 1945 issue of the Socialist Standard

In our January issue we drew attention to the way in which the “Daily Express" under the guise of reporting textually the words used by Mr. Eden in a speech, carefully doctored it by altering “Labour" to “Socialist." This is an old custom of the Beaverbrook Press and shortly afterwards they were caught doing it again in an alleged report of a speech by Mr. Bevin. This time the Manchester Guardian took it up. In an editorial “Hard of Hearing" the Guardian (April 10th), pointed out how the Sunday Express (and also the Daily Telegraph), altered the words, so that where Mr. Bevin actually said “Labour" they altered it to “Socialism." Doubting whether the reporters were to blame the Guardian said one must suspect “the existence of some of those 'directives' of which our ‘press Lords' are fond. . . . It would be a pity to have to conclude that we have lost that old principle in journalism of reporting what was said, not what the newspaper owners would like to have had said."

The Daily Express, on April 12th, published what was supposed to be a reply to the Guardian’s charge of deliberate faking. This is how they did it. Carefully refraining from mentioning what the charge was, the Express lightly and obscurely referred to it as "a mistake in one of the provincial editions of the “Sunday Express."

Of course it was astute—and characteristic—of the Express not to let its readers know the nature of the charge; the way is thus left open for the “mistake" to go on being made without the readers suspecting it.

We are entitled to wonder how much other falsification goes on in the columns of the Express and Telegraph under the guise of reporting.

In a rather different category is the habit of most newspapers of using the terms Socialist Party and Socialism to describe the Labour Party and its programme, but without actually falsifying reports of speeches. On April 11th, 1945, “Candidus" in the Daily Sketch devoted the whole of his column to the claim made by the S.P.G.B. that the Labour Party is not a Socialist Party. He admitted that he habitually refers to the Labour Party as the Socialist Party and to its spokesmen as Socialists and put forward the naive (or was it disingenous?) explanation that he “thought it was correct.”

As the Labour Party has existed for 40 years under that title it can hardly have escaped the notice of “Candidus," so his explanation is as unconvincing as it would be if we said we “thought we were correct" in describing him as “Uncandidus."

Although he wrote at considerable length he made no attempt to justify his belief that the hotch-potch and ever-changing Labour Party programme of reforms, and its state capitalist schemes for regulating capitalism can be correctly described as socialism. Perhaps it would be uncharitable to say that busy journalists whose job it is to promote the circulation (and profits) of their employers' papers while at the same time keeping the readers’ minds away from dangerous thoughts about the evils of capitalism have no need and little time to find out what Socialism is all about. 

We can, however, place it on record that the Daily Sketch (May 3rd), published a reply sent by the S.P.G.B.