It was obvious that no editor could any longer print all the information offered him, and it was equally evident that the reader, whose range of vision had been surprisingly widened by the modern means of communication, had neither time nor inclination to read it all. Editors who could and would edit were required. Newspapers presenting a carefully prepared perspective of the day's history of the world were needed.
Needs, wants, and reality are different.
Once, AP members wanted impartiality. Now, collectivism is wanted.
What the members of AP want, the Pooblik gets.
Until the Internet and talk radio, that is.
;-)
An inexperienced reporter stood beside President McKinley in the Music-hall at Buffalo when Czolgosz fired the fatal shot. He seized a neighboring telephone and notified our Buffalo correspondent, and then pulled out the wires, in order to render the telephone a wreck, so that it was a full half-hour before any additional details could be secured.An experienced AP reporter would, I take it, have known how to make sure that no other reporters could send news for at least an hour and a half . . .
Notice how much of this apologia is focussed on “breaking news.” News which, in the case of the dying Pope and the dying president in particular, was a mere formality because neither man was going to affect future events. In general, the idea that “breaking news scoops” are valuable is a bias on the part of the AP and other news organizations. In historical retrospect they do not matter.This the writer has no conception of. The public is, of course, always interested in breaking news, and does have ephemeral value in preventing missteps which would occur in the absence of timely information. But what is the excuse for damaging a pubic telephone so that no one else can satisfy the public curiosity??? The crucial distinction is between “the public interest” on the one hand, and interesting the public on the other. Breaking the embargo on the news of the pope’s death was a “coup” from the AP’s POV, but not from a humanitarian one.