Pop Quiz:
What journalist said: “In journalism, there has always been a tension between getting it first and getting it right.”?
What historian said: “Journalism still, in a democracy, is the essential force to get the public educated and mobilized to take action on behalf of our ancient ideals.”?
What nationalist leader said: “The media’s the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that’s power. Because they control the minds of the masses.”?
What economist said: “In politics, the truth is strictly optional and that also seems to be true in parts of the media.”?
What author said: “The people will believe what the media tells them they believe.”?
Answers at the end of the post.
The Power of the Press has been devolutionary.
The First Amendment prohibits any abridgement both speech and the freedom of the press. In 1733 John Peter Zenger began publishing the New York Weekly Journal. It turns out that William Crosby, the colonial governor of New York, was every bit as thin skinned as Barack Obama. Zenger was arrested for publishing articles critical of Crosby. He was acquitted but his case was a strong impetus for the inclusion of freedom of the press in the First Amendment.
By the end of the 18th Century in Europe a free press had become part of the political landscape. It was acknowledged that there were three “estates” that costituted the social order: the clergy, royalty and the commoners (about 95% of the population). The Fourth Estate was, according to Edmund Burke, the press. According to Burke the Fourth Estate was responsible for monitoring and reporting on the machinations of the other estates in the political hierarchy. In today’s parlance they were responsible for providing transparency with respect to the actions of the various branches of the government.
At that time the press was limited to localized newspapers and commentators who engaged in pamphleteering. Newspapers tended to cover stories of local interest. Political issues were more likely to be addressed by the pamphleteers and their jottings were, more often than not, partisan and combative.
One of the more scurrilous of the early pamphleteers was James Callender, a native Scot who emigrated to Philadelphia. Callender was single minded in his opposition to Thomas Jefferson. He was the source of the fake news that Jefferson had sired a number of children with a slave named Sally Hemings. He was a character assassin and an early practitioner of the blood sport referred to as mudslinging.
It was during the 19th Century that the distribution of news transformed from local to national and both the speed and the reach of that distribution increased asymptotically. Thanks to Samuel Morse information could be sent from coast to coast with the click of a telegraph key. Telegraphy was not a tool of mass distribution but it removed geographic limitations. Any student of the Civil War remembers that President Lincoln spent a great deal of time at the War Department studying what he called “lightning messages” from the various battlefronts.
The Associated Press was founded in 1846 with the promise to dispense news stories to local newspapers. Newspaper publication became Big Business and news magnates such as Joseph Pulitzer and Williams Randolph Hearst established publishing conglomerates from coast to coast. Pulitzer and Hearst engaged in a fierce competition to get the most sensational stories on their respective front pages. This was disparagingly referred to as “yellow journalism” and led to such cliches as “if it bleeds, it leads”. It has been suggested that Hearst was, in part, responsible for initiating the Spanish-American War…Remember the Maine was his editorial war cry.
A red headed stepchild of legitimate journalism was the social commentary called muckraking. It was exemplified by Lincoln Steffens who wrote, The Jungle, exposing the horrific working conditions in the meat packing industry. It was, in large part, a tool used by the Progressives in their fight against economic inequality.
The 20th Century brought us radio and television and the news of the day was delivered directly into living rooms across America. During World War II “newsreels” were shown in movie theaters to keep the public informed as to what was happening at the European and Pacific war fronts. The drive to keep the people informed was the order of the day.
In the 1950’s Walter Cronkite, Howard K. Smith, Douglas Edwards and Huntley and Brinkley were household names. They hosted the evening news broadcasts on the major television networks. Viewership was closely tracked by polling companies such as Gallup and the most important CTQs for those delivering the news were honesty and trustworthiness. There may have been some level of personal bias in what was covered and how it was reported but it was not open and notorious. They engaged in reporting the news not making the news.
For example, the press treated the Presidency with respect and dignity. They agreed to the White House request that FDR not be pictured with his leg braces, the result of his battle with polio. Everyone knew that JFK was engaged in a number of trysts in the White House (Marilyn Monroe being the most famous) but it was off limits on the evening news. There was a distinction between covering the news and reporting on the personal peccadilloes of the people in the news.
And then Watergate happened and the media realized the power of the press could alter the national political debate. In short order this led to the transmogrification of the Fourth Estate to a Fifth Column.
The Fifth Column is a term to describe the “infiltration of sympathizers into the entire fabric of the nation under attack and, particularly, into positions of policy decision and national defense.” It is attributed to a Nationalist General in the Spanish Civil War (1936-39). Then General was moving to take Madrid with his four army columns but he was counting on the support his supporters within Madrid to undermine the loyalist government…his fifth column. They are the enemy within.
Stay tuned for the thrilling conclusion to this tectonic shift in the power of the press in the next post.
Answers to the pop quiz:
What journalist said: “In journalism, there has always been a tension between getting it first and getting it right.”? Ellen Goodman
What historian said: “Journalism still, in a democracy, is the essential force to get the public educated and mobilized to take action on behalf of our ancient ideals.”? Doris Kearns Goodwin
What nationalist leader said: “The media’s the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that’s power. Because they control the minds of the masses.”? Malcolm the Tenth
What economist said: “In politics, the truth is strictly optional and that also seems to be true in parts of the media.”? Thomas Sowell
What author said: “The people will believe what the media tells them they believe.”? Eric Blair