... and since I would like to keep things
reasonably accurate on my webpage, I went looking to see
if I could verify or dispute the Swinton vignette.
It turned out - surprise! - that like most really good stories,
it contained a little bit of truth, and a bit of fiction,
and, unlike most really good stories,
the reality behind the story is even more interesting.
Yes, Virginia, there was a John Swinton,
and yes, he was an editor of the New York Times,
and yes, he did say the remarks attributed to him.
However, he did not say it at a retirement party,
he did not say it as an editor of the Times,
and he certainly did not say it in 1953,
for the simple reason that he died in 1901.
A web search turned up the same vignette,
word for word as I had it, in hundreds of locations.
However, as McMahon notes, there are variations on the theme,
including one which had him born in 1829
and giving the remarks at a retirement party in 1918.
He would have been at least 88.
Feisty old bastard, what with being dead 17 years and all.
But I hit paydirt in some odd areas.
At
http://www.scots_in_the_civil_war.net/newsmen.htm,
I found the following:
John Swinton (1829_1901)
The managing editor of the New York Times during the Civil War,
John Swinton later became a crusading journalist
in the movement for social and labor reform.
Scottish_born, he learned typesetting in Canada
before moving to the United States.
During the trouble in Kansas he was active
in the freesoil movement and headed the Lawrence Republican.
Moving back to New York he wrote an occasional article
for the Times and was hired on a regular basis in 1860
as head of the editorial staff.
Afterward holding this position throughout the Civil War,
he left the paper in 1870
and became active in the labor struggles of the day.
He later served eight years in the same position
on the New York Sun and published a weekly labor sheet,
John Swinton's Paper.
[...]
One night, probably in 1880, John Swinton,
then the preeminent New York journalist,
was the guest of honour at a banquet given him
by the leaders of his craft.
Someone who knew neither the press nor Swinton
offered a toast to the independent press.
Swinton outraged his colleagues by replying:
"There is no such thing, at this date of the world's history,
in America, as an independent press.
You know it and I know it."
"There is not one of you who dares to write your honest opinions,
and if you did, you know beforehand that it would never appear
in print.
I am paid weekly for keeping my honest opinion
out of the paper I am connected with.
Others of you are paid similar salaries for similar things,
and any of you who would be so foolish as to write honest opinions
would be out on the streets looking for another job.
If I allowed my honest opinions to appear in one issue of my paper,
before twenty_four hours my occupation would be gone."
"The business of the journalists is to destroy the truth,
to lie outright, to pervert, to vilify,
to fawn at the feet of mammon,
and to sell his country and his race for his daily bread.
You know it and I know it,
and what folly is this toasting an independent press?"
"We are the tools and vassals of rich men behind the scenes.
We are the jumping jacks, they pull the strings and we dance.
Our talents, our possibilities and our lives are all
the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes."
(Source:
Labor's Untold Story, by Richard O. Boyer and Herbert M. Morais,
published by United Electrical, Radio & Machine Workers of America,
NY, 1955/1979.)