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Critic's Teeth. Liebling has decided prejudices of his own. "The Sun" he says, "is a suburban paper published "on the island of Manhattan . . . as perfectly preserved as the corpse of Lenin." Liebling's impression of Pundit Walter Lippmann: "Nowtherefore and whereas and ahem." PM's Max Lerner writes editorials "like an elephant treading the dead body of a mouse into the floor of its cage." Liebling often rags the Chicago Tribune and Bertie McCormick, but wonders if it "isn't like punching the heavy bag. The Colonel is in the direct line of Dickens' Colonel Diver of the Rowdy Journal and of Elijah Pogram, who 'Defied the world, sir—defied the world in general to compete with our country upon any hook; and devellop'd our resources for making war upon the universal airth.' "
Liebling views with alarm the trend toward fewer newspapers and their control by "a group of wealthy individuals who share the same point of view." He thinks publishers have no right to be publishers simply because they inherited papers. Writes Liebling: "Try to imagine the future of medicine, law or pedagogy if their absolute control were vested in the legal heirs of men who had bought practices in 1890—even when the heirs lacked any special training."
He doubts the complete freedom of the U.S. press, points out that it takes $10 million to start a newspaper in a big city and $1 million in a middle-sized city. Reporter Liebling's solutions (which all call for big money, too): 1) newspapers backed by labor unions, citizens' groups and political parties, 2) endowed newspapers, "devoted to pursuit of daily truth as Dartmouth is to that of knowledge." Liebling thinks an increasing number of readers share his mistrust of newspapers. Says he: "There is less a disposition to accept what they say than to try to estimate the probable truth . . . like aiming a rifle [with] a deviation to the right."