The Ball and the Cross

by G.K. Chesterton

It is the one great weakness of journalism as a picture of our modern existence, that it must be a picture made up entirely of exceptions.

Busy editors cannot be expected to put on their posters, "Mr. Wilkinson Still Safe," or "Mr. Jones, of Worthing, Not Dead Yet." They cannot announce the happiness of mankind at all. They cannot describe all the forks that are not stolen, or all the marriages that are not judiciously dissolved.

Hence the complete picture they give of life is of necessity fallacious; they can only represent what is unusual. However democratic they may be, they are only concerned with the minority.

The Government was solemnly denounced in the papers for not having done something, nobody knew what, to prevent the window being broken.