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There is thus an interaction between the makers or

leaders of public opinion and the masses. The success of leadership, indeed, consists in the ability to lead but largely in the direction of the momentum produced by the people. The leader who loses his identity with the crowd loses his hold on his followers. 1 The element of identity is essential to success.

Such being the essential prerequisites to leadership, the question as to whether public opinion crystalized by leaders and assented to by the people as contrasted with public opinion that would emerge from the masses in some other way is not, after all, a better guide is answered. As a principle, of course, the individual should be an articulate being. For practical purposes, however, he cannot be. Self-centered communities and omnicompetent individuals are both visionary things in this present complex life. Public opinion, it would seem, like all other well-done things in this modern world, is a product of specialized training. The crystalization of public opinion

is a job for the specialist.

May we not conclude with Ellwood, then, that "if public opinion means no absolute uniformity of individual judgment but rather the crystalization of opinion in a definite direction, it may well represent the matured judgment of leaders and specialists who are in close touch with the public"?2

1. See Gustave LeBon. The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind; W. M. Conway. The Crowd in Peace and War; W. Trotter. Instinct of the Herd in Peace and War.

2. Charles E. Ellwood. The Formation of Public Opinion, Religious Education, Vol. XV, pp.73-80.

CHAPTER V

THE PRESS AND PUBLIC OPINION1

Having ascertained what Spencer found out many years ago "that human beings of all times and climes, from the momert of forming aggregates of over a hundred persons, absolutely cannot get along without social differentiation, without hierarchical

gradation or without a system of subordination and superiority"?

and having seen that in the crystalization of public opinion, this same phenomenon operates in the form of leadership sorting the materials and shaping the product, our next inquiry will be the relation of the press, as the most wide-spread and the most comprehensive existing agency of public information, to public opinion.

The leadership of the public press in the formation of public opinion overrides all other forms of leadership singly and collectively. Although as we have mentioned heretofore, we do not deny the influence exerted by other agencies of information as the radio, moving pictures and the platform, our thesis is that, in actuality, the public press exerts the influence that brings actual results. This is true for several reasons. Printed matter has a certain charm and glamor which the spoken word does not have and printed matter has a permanent form that lasts. The public in general knows that the

1. Most of the ideas presented in this chapter not otherwise credited to some one else are the result of impressions I have gained from the lectures of Prof. Willard G. Bleyer on the Principles and Ethics of Journalism during the second semester of 1924-1925.

2. Ludwig Stein, Anarchy or Order in the Atlantic Monthly, Vol.CXXXIV,pp.376-384.

press, despite all its limitations, aims at accuracy.

The

element of fiction that is always taken for granted in connection with everything presented on the stage is thus lacking.

But the speed with which the press gathers the news of the day and the systematic form in which it presents those news, count for more in the totality of its influence. The various press associations literally comb the world for news day after day for simultaneous publication by their numerous subscribers. So that before any other agency of public information gets hold of the facts, the press has presented them to the reading public. The psychology of the sitation is obvious. The average reader will thus have formed a judgment or, at least, a sentiment on a subject or situation presented by the press, before any other agency of public opinion reaches him. And the average reader possesses an intrinsic faith in the newspaper he reads. He swallows its reading matter; he swears by it. All others are likely to be wrong, or at best, only partly correct.

If democracy, then, is that form of government in which public opinion has control, that institution in a democracy which is most responsible for the formation of public opinion, therefore, guides and directs democracy. That institution is the public press.

Whether we like it or not, the public press and more particularly the newspapers, furnish the facts and the stimuli which in actuality go to make up our sentiments and our opinions on practically all questions, social and political.

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