Last Updated: December 29, 2000
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History
Coolidge’s 1925 remark is a textbook ‘quote out of
context’
By Jim Ottaway Jr.
Calvin Coolidge gave a speech to the American Society of Newspaper Editors
75 years ago with remarkably accurate insights into the dual nature of
American newspapers as both idealistic in their reporting of news and opinion
and profit-making in their business operations.
It is little known in our newspaper profession that it was in this speech
that Calvin Coolidge made his famous and often-criticized statement that
“the chief business of the American people is business.”
Careful reading of the complete text of that speech proves that quoting
only that one phrase is a perfect example for Journalism 101 professors
and students of taking a quote out of context.
Going to the original source reveals that Coolidge balanced that isolated
remark with these words:
“American newspapers have seemed to me to be particularly representative
of this practical idealism of our people ... The chief ideal of the American
people is idealism. I cannot repeat too often that America is a nation
of idealists ... No newspaper can be a success which fails to appeal to
that element of our national life.”
Coolidge’s speech also shows that he understood what high journalistic
standards should be — “to serve the public interests” and “to promote the
general welfare” rather than to serve the selfish interests of owners and
publishers.
William Allen White, the famous publisher and editor from Emporia, Kansas,
knew Coolidge well and wrote a biography of the President called “A Puritan
in Babylon.” But even White takes that famous quote out of context.v
Editor’s Note: Ottaway has a farmhouse in Plymouth, Vermont, where
Calvin Coolidge was born, sworn in as President on Aug. 3, 1923, and buried
in the town cemetery.
Ottaway is a senior vice president of Dow Jones & Company and
chairman of Ottaway Newspapers group.
