does select. It can and does garble. But it has to do this always
within certain limitations.

These limitations have, I think, already been reached; but that is a
matter which I argue more fully later on.




VII


As to opinion, you have the same limitations.

If opinion can be once launched in spite of, or during the
indifference of, the Press (and it is a big "if"); if there is no
machinery for actually suppressing the mere statement of a doctrine
clearly important to its readers--then the Press is bound sooner or
later to deal with such doctrine: just as it is bound to deal with
really vital news.

Here, again, we are dealing with something very different indeed from
that title "An organ of opinion" to which the large newspaper has in
the past pretended. But I am arguing for the truth that the Press--in
the sense of the great Capitalist newspapers--cannot be wholly
divorced from opinion.

We have had three great examples of this in our own time in England.
Two proceeded from the small wealthy class, and one from the mass of
the people.