At least two years ago now, someone posted (to a.f.n-m) a provocative
confession of a newspaperman, a John Swinton alleged Chief Editor of the
NYT in 1953, wherein he bemoaned, in very flowery prose, the moral
bankruptcy of himself and the entire journalism profession. Surprised by
its prevalence (it appeared some 200 times on the net) and skeptical of
its authenticity (just too juicy a piece of gossip) Eliot Blake and I
began trying to track it down, following false leads and mistaken hunches
on and off for two years. I even found the Obituary of a John Swinden from
the early 1980's who had lived the rich, satisfying life a foreign
correspondent who had a brief stint with the NYT in the 1950's. My belated
mourning for this man, 14 or so years after his death, seems embarassing
now as Eliot found the real John Swinton and genuine quote, included
below.
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Well, I think I've finally solved the mystery, thanks to the miracle of
Nexis.
E661 .S58 1984
Page Smith, _The Rise of Industrial America: A People's History of the
Post-Reconstruction Era, Vol. 6_ (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company,
1984), pp. 378-379:
It would be a serious mistake, of course, to suggest that the
American press - newspapers as a whole -- was an enthusiastic advocate of
reform. The facts were otherwise. There were, to be sure, liberal
newspapers, Democratic and Republican, and even a few radical ones, but
the overwhelming majority of newspapers were, as we have noted before,
dedicated upholders of the _status quo_. In response to a toast to "the
independent press" at a meeting of the New York Press Association, John
Swinton replied: "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 express an honest opinion. If you express it
you know beforehand that it would never appear in print. I am paid $150
per week for keeping my honest opinions out of the paper I am connected
with. Others of you are paid similar salaries [p. 379] for doing similar
things....The business of the New York journalist is to distort the truth,
to lie outright, to pervert, to vilify, to fawn at the feet of Mammon, and
sell his country and race for his daily bread, or for what is about the
same thing, his salary. You know this, and I know it; and what foolery to
be toasting an 'independent press.' We are tools, and the vassals of rich
men behind the scenes. We are jumping-jacks. They pull the strings and we
dance. Our time, our talents, our lives, our possibilities, all are the
property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes."
Sounds great, right? But there are two problems with the version that has
been posted (at least 200 times, by my last count) on the net. First, John
Swinton never "headed" or "was Chief of Staff" of the times. Second, he
didn't say that in 1953 - he'd been dead for 52 years. It appears in the
Page Smith book in a discussion of journalism in the 1870s or thereabouts;
no date for the quote is given.
Swinton worked for the Times, starting as chief editorial writer. From
1875 to 1883 and later from 1892 to 1896, he worked for the New York Sun.
At some point he edited his own labor paper, appropriately known as _John
Swinton's Paper_. He figures prominently in the Smith book, and is
chronicled in Sender Garlin's _John Swinton: American Radical
(1821-1901)_, Occasional Papers Series No. 20 (New York: The American
Institute for Marxist Studies, Inc., 1976). This is a typewritten paper
about 46 pages long and has Library of Congress Cat. No. HD 8073 .S84G37.
The paper includes accounts of his encounters with Karl Marx and his
championing of and correspondence with Walt Whitman. It looks pretty
interesting, but I didn't really read it closely.
In case you're wondering, I found the quote as you had it (or roughly
that) used in a few letters to the editor (e.g., Lewiston Morning Tribune,
May 25, 1995, 12A) and in an article in the February 12, 1995 Fresno Bee
by Roger Tatarian, on page B9. An earlier letter/rant had gotten Tatarian,
a professor emeritus (sp?) from CSU Fresno, looking into it, and he
contacted the Times and then tracked down who Swinton was. He didn't
actually find the quote, but he did note that the contemporary one seemed
a bit flowery in its prose for an editor speaking in 1953. (Had it been
spread as it appeared originally, of course, the $150 a week should have
clued people in.) I must confess that the letters in which the quote
appeared in my Nexis search appear to have been written by borderline
wingnuts, though I should add that I did not read them closely and could
not print them out because the printer connected to Nexis is screwed up
here. I tracked down the actual quote because a portion of it appears in a
1985 review of the Smith book, which was in the Washington Post I
think....
Thought you'd like to know.
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