Industry | 2010.08.25
The matter of opinion | Sarah Churchwell
As the inventor of op-eds Herbert Swope knew, views have to be planted on facts to hold any value
\'I am not one of those who in expressing opinions confine themselves to facts," Mark Twain quipped. This could be the motto of our age, as opinion threatens to replace facts entirely – including the facts surrounding the invention of opinion journalism itself. It was the brainchild of a man who would have been as appalled as any Frankenstein at the monster his genius created.
Herbert Bayard Swope (1882-1958) was a renowned American newspaperman, as famous in his day as Rupert Murdoch in ours – albeit infinitely more admired, and more admirable. Virtually forgotten now, Swope was a supernova in an age of star reporters, one of the most influential men in America, hobnobbing with everyone from presidents to movie stars, novelists to industrialists. He was the only reporter at the signing of the Treaty of Versailles and the first winner of the Pulitzer prize for journalism in 1917. Swope is perhaps most often remembered today as the man whose magnificent, riotous house parties in the 1920s provided F Scott Fitzgerald with one of his models for the Great Gatsby\'s extravaganzas.
But Swope\'s most far-reaching achievement is the one that seems likeliest to be erased from our increasingly ephemeral cultural history. In 1920 he was hired as the first executive editor of the New York World . Like any editor, Swope found himself negotiating the conflicting imperatives of responsible reportage and popular sensationalism that continue to shape journalism today. The dull recitation of facts bored readers; but lurid tabloid scandal was irresponsible and worthless. Instead, Swope found an inspired compromise to drive up circulation: opinion.
In addition to offering the newspaper\'s official position on controversial topics of the day on its traditional editorial page, Swope had the epiphany of using the page opposite the editorial, which until 1921 was a repository for miscellany – advertisements, notices, reviews, obituaries – as a space for journalists to offer commentary and perspective. Swope explained: "It occurred to me that nothing is more interesting than opinion when opinion is interesting." So he dedicated the page opposite the editorial to opinion, "I decided to print opinions, ignoring facts." The op-ed was born, and the circulation of the World skyrocketed.
The brilliance of Swope\'s vision of the op-ed, however, is in his qualification: opinion is only interesting when it is interesting opinion. This may sound tautological, but isn\'t, as the millions of opinions with which we are all bombarded daily demonstrate. No doubt many wags reading this will gleefully inform me that my opinion isn\'t interesting, either. But my point is that it has the virtue at least of being informed, and Swope was being facetious when he claimed to ignore facts: what made opinions interesting was precisely their grasp of the facts. Swope once described journalism as "a priestly mission," saying: "If every child could be trained early in life to get the facts and trained how to use the facts, there would be saved a vast amount of waste effort and energy now dissipated."
Opinion journalism today is too often opposed diametrically (and ideologically) to fact – opinion is a synonym for belief, prejudice, bigotry, confirmation bias, misrepresentation, distortion and outright fabrication. Swope never thought that opinion should be released from the obligation of being informed, or, indeed, fair-minded: "The first duty of a newspaper is to be accurate," he said. "If it is accurate, it follows that it is fair." The same goes for opinions: they should come after the facts, not before.
For more information, please visit
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/aug/15/op-ed-herbert-swope-fact
