Historical Show
The Beginning of MassCommunication InThe United States
It also helped that because of intense competition, the cost of some newspapers had come down to as low as one-cent a copy. Although this seems like a very low price, we have to remember that was about 175 years ago. By this time advertisers had been attracted to newspapers and young boys were hawking newspapers on street corners. At about this point in history the average citizen was reading two or more newspapers a day. This era, commonly called the era of "The Penny Press," is considered my many historians as the beginning of mass communication in the United States. Many of the present-day newspapers got their start during this time, including The Chicago Tribune in 1847, and The New York Times in 1851. Among the newspapers to also appear in the mid-1800s were several that served minority interests. Most notable was Freedom's Journal, a paper serving the interests of, in the worlds of the masthead, "the colored American." This was the first of more than 40 black newspapers to appear. The Associated Press Founded Associated Press Statistics
The Effect of the Civil War War reporting introduced the inverted pyramid style of writing news. Reports from the battlefield often had to be sent by telegraph, which was not totally reliable in those days. Since a report could be interrupted before the transmission was complete, or the story might have to be cut down because of financial and space considerations, reporters started the story with the most important developments and facts. These facts were expanded as the story was developed. (Note illustration on the right.) Thus, the story could be cut without losing the most important facts. The inverted pyramid style has also become know as the who, what, when, why, and how approach to writing, where each of these questions is answered in the first sentence of the news story. Although this style has continued to this day for hard news in newspapers, broadcast writing uses a different style. The Beginning of Photojournalism Matthew Brady was the most famous Civil War photographer. His photos brought the horrors of war home to readers. At that point military leaders took it on themselves to censor and limit battlefield news coverage. By the late 1800s, a halftone process for reproducing newspaper photographs from photographic prints had been invented. This introduced photojournalism and further spurred interest in newspapers. The history of photography is covered in a bit more detail in another module. The Era of the Newspaper Baron Competition between newspapers became intense and ushered in the era of yellow journalism. Although yellow journalism generally connotes an era of sensationalism, where crime, social scandals, and sex are used to sell papers, the term actually refers to a comic strip -- one of the first to appear in any newspaper. The comic strip appeared in Pulitzer's New York World He was even accused of starting a war to sell newspapers by pushing for U.S. involvement in what turned out to be the Spanish-American War. Hearst sent a reporter to the front to cover the rumored war. When the reporter cabled back that there was no war in progress and that he was ready to come home, Hearst reportedly wired back, "Please remain. You supply the pictures, and I'll supply the war." After Hearst regularly published a steady stream of vitriolic editorializing against President William McKinley, the President was assassinated. Today, we don't have such vitriolic editorializing in our mainstream newspapers, but some radio talk show hosts generate audiences using the same approach. Tabloid newspapers are generally half the size of a normal newspaper, or about 11 by 14 inches. Popular ads of the day were for soaps (see photo on left), and various creams, ointments and tonics that would supposedly cure about anything. The Era of Responsible Journalism A man by the name of Alolph Ochs believed that a newspaper didn't It was an idea that was long overdue, especially with middle and upper class readers. Some other New York papers followed, and the era of "responsible journalism" ensued. Even so, Hearst and Pulitzer kept their focus on "the working class," and tended to stick the concepts of jazz journalism -- concepts that are still "alive and well" in today's supermarket tabloids. Radio and TV Impact Newspaper Circulation TV also changed readership patterns. Before TV, most people picked up their afternoon newspaper after work. Now they turn on TV news at this time and prefer to read a morning newspaper over breakfast. Consequently, the afternoon newspapers, which had long been popular, lost favor. One of the causalities was the Los Angeles Herald Examiner. Once the nation's largest afternoon daily, the Herald Examiner ceased publication on November 2, 1989. This unquestioned loyalty then took two major hits: the publication of the Pentagon Papers, and the Watergate scandal. When the Watchdog
Throughout history, political, legal and economic pressures have been applied -- often successfully -- to keep journalists from doing their jobs as watchdogs for democratic societies. Although such pressures are commonplace in autocratic societies such as North Korea, China and Iran where news people end up in jail or worse for simply telling the truth, we assume that such things are rare in the United States. Unfortunately, this is not true. What follows are three examples. We will not include the recent stock scandals or the religious molestation crimes that have ruined many lives, as bad as these have been. The implications of the following examples go beyond even these. The Pentagon Papers
The Pentagon Papers brought to light the political and military thinking behind the war -- including some decisions and justifications that in retrospect ware questionable. The government knew that bringing this information to light would undermine the public's confidence in their government -- and, as it turned out, they were right. Before the war was over, a large percentage of Americans at home and serving in Vietnam had turned against the war. An estimated 250 underground antiwar newspapers were published by active-duty soldiers and distributed in coffeehouses.
As questions about the war continued to surface, and as the toll of dead and wounded mounted, antiwar sentiments transcended generational views. The U.S. news media, which originally had an almost unquestioned allegiance to the war effort, started reporting the major differences in what they were being told by the Administration and what they were finding out on their own.
Ellsberg was finally able to get the papers to a reporter, but he was subsequently arrested for treason, which can carry the death penalty. Fortunately for him, the government had resorted to illegal and highly questionable activities in perusing him, and when this came out during the trial, the judge threw out the charges. Even so, the Nixon administration moved to block the publication of the papers and successfully won temporary injunctions against the New York Times, and later, the Washington Post, which by this time had also planned to publish them. But, on June 30, 1971, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that stopping publication amounted to “prior restraint,” which violated free speech protection. Both the New York Times and The Washington Post then published Pentagon Papers. While this was a victory for freedom of the press, the revelations undermined the public's confidence in pursuing this ill-fated war -- a war which in essence we ended up losing. Years later, even the major architect of the Vietnam war, the late Robert McNamara, who had been Defense Secretary during that time, publicly disavowed his decisions on the war as, "wrong, terribly wrong." This misunderstood and misrepresented chapter in American history is chronicled in the 2009, 94-minute, Academy Award nominated film, The Most Dangerous Man In America. But, after these revelations another major jolt was on the horizon. The Watergate Scandal In 1973, two reporters for the Washington Post faced down major threats and engaged in some tenacious investigative journalism to bring to light the corrupt dealings of President Richard Nixon. The story of the Watergate Scandal and reporters Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward of the Washington Post is documented in the Academy Award-winning film, All the President's Men, from which this photo was taken. The film, which documents what led up to the resignation of the only president in U.S. history, is worth renting for both its educational and dramatic values.
The general mistrust between the government and the press that emerged during these times continued until the 9/11 terrorist attacks in United States in 2001. Patriotism and the PressAfter 9/11, patriotism again soared, and, again, the mainstream press failed to critically examine the premise of a war. In the case, the Iraq war. The Bush Administration first tried to tie the 9/11 terrorist attacks to Iraq (later, and Administration conceded there was no real connection) and to the presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq (none were ever found). In short, the primary justification for going to war with Iraq was bogus -- a fact that was rather openly stated by the leaders of many of our allies at the time but ignored by the Bush Administration. Although the facts are all there for anyone that takes the time to find them, even now much of the public continues to believe in the discredited justification for the war. Studies have shown, once most people believe something, they tend to hang onto those views, even in the presence of new and more valid information.
Those who questioned the justification for the war were discredited and even branded as traitors to the country. This photo of Ms. Plame is from her subsequent book, Fair Game, which tells the story from her perspective. Knowingly exposing a CIA agent's identity and possibly jeopardizing her life and the lives of associated agents is a federal offense of the highest order. But in this case short-term political goals were seen as more important and some in the Administration put considerable effort into destroying the credibility of Ms. Plame and especially that of her husband, Ambassador Joe Wilson, whose work the Bush Administration had previously praised. See Echo Chamber News |
What point was the newspaper motto It does not soil the breakfast cloth trying to make
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