AustLit

'First mother went away. Then it was our father, twitching from under our feet the rugs, which formed, he said, a valuable collection. We were alone for a little then. Not really alone, of course, for there was Fraulein Hoffman, and Mademoiselle Leblanc, and Kyria Smaragda our housekeeper, and Eurydice the cook, and the two maids from Lesbos. The house was full of the whispering of women, and all of us felt melancholy. ' (Introduction)
 

'It was that very astute and remarkable journalist, C. P. Scott of the Manchester Guardian, who said 'a newspaper has a moral as well as a material existence, and its character and influence are in the main determinated by the balance of these two forces'. This could be said of all individuals, all institutions, all businesses, all industries, all professions in a free society, but it applies with particular emphasis to some individuals (journalists are an example) and to some institutions (the press, radio, and television). Scott found the balance struck between the moral and the material existence of newspapers particularly significant because the newspaper 'plays on the minds and consciences of men'. So, too, do the other mass media of communication.' (Introduction)