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- Media Technologies: Contemporary Print
- Muckraking
- a kind of reform journalism
- term coined by Theodore Roosevelt
- early 20th century
- sensational stories
- expose scandal
- call for reform
- part of the Progressive Era, 1900–1914
- Muckraking magazines
- Cosmopolitan
- Collier’s Weekly
- McClure’s
- Munsey’s Magazine
- topics
- child labor
- slum housing
- tainted meat
- political graft
- insurance fraud
- patent medicines
- corrupt Standard Oil monopoly
- Muckraking’s Greatest Hits
- “History of Standard Oil”
- Ida Tarbell
- McClures magazine
- 1902–1904
- Standard Oil monopoly
- “Great American Fraud”
- Samuel Hopkins Adams
- Collier’s magazine
- 1905
- patent medicines
- “The Treason of the Senate: Aldrich, the Head of it All”
- David Graham Phillips
- Cosmopolitan magazine
- 1906
- corruption in selection of US senators
- The Jungle
- Upton Sinclair
- 1906
- slaughterhouses
- How the Other Half Lives
- Jacob Riis
- 1890
- squalid housing conditions
- End of Muckraking Era
- libel suits against publishers
- magazine mergers
- Roosevelt’s criticism
- public opinion fatigued by crusading reformers
- World War I
- World War I
- August 1914
- Germany invades Belgium
- Will Irvin and Richard Harding Davis, New York Tribune, reported on the invasion
- news would turn public opinion against Germany
- Censorship
- governments issued blanket censorship statements
- prevent demoralizing news from the battlefield to reach readers on the homefront
- e.g., Battle of the Somme, 1916, where Britain sustained massive troop loss, was reported as a victory
- prevent criticism of the war from being published
- e.g., French government suspended L’Homme Libre from publishing
- US Espionage Act, 1917
- censored dissenting news about the war
- banned German-language newspapers from the mail
- Propaganda
- German agent Bolo Pasha using French newspapers to undermine French efforts against Germany
- Hearst International News Service working with German government and news agencies
- US Committee on Public Information, headed by George Creel, to boost morale at home
- Russian Revolution
- November 1917
- Lenin used newspaper to operate as organs of the state bureaucracy
- no publication was allowed to print criticism against Russia or communism, 1917–1991
- freedom of the press was seen as a bourgeois plot to corrupt public opinion
- events of the October Revolution covered in John Reed’s book, Ten Days that Shook the World
- German Press Under Nazism
- censorship to serve the purpose of Nazi propaganda
- arts
- literature
- press
- radio
- films
- Joseph Goebbels, minister of propaganda
- Leni Reifensthal, filmmaker of the Third Reich
- Reich Press Law
- October 1933
- newspapers
- closed: Voissische Zeitung
- confiscated
- Berliner Tageblatt
- Wollf’s Telegraph Bureau
- directly controlled by the Nazi Party
- dissenters would flee in exile or be executed
- US and World War II
- censorship was much lighter than was during World War I
- criticisms about preparedness and prewar isolationism
- war reporting
- Ernie Pyle covered “ordinary soliders”
- women such as Marguerite Higgins witnessing the liberation of concentration camps
- African American press came to support the war (“Double V” campaign)
- Hutchins Commission
- Commission on Freedom of the Press, convened by Robert Maynard Hutchins, 1947
- found that freedom of expression was “imperiled” by accelerating technology and irresponsible owners
- urged publishers to act as “common carriers of information and discussion”
- five recommendations for publishers to provide:
- truthful, comprehensive, intelligent account of the day’s events
- a forum for the exchange of comment and criticism
- representative picture of the constituent groups in the society
- presentation and clarification of the goals and values of the society
- full access to the day’s intelligence
- Black Press
- African Americans fought slavery and prejudice
- Freedom’s Journal, 1827
- North Star, 1847, founded by Frederick Douglass
- Chicago Defender, 1905
- Pittsburg Courier, 1907
- Ebony magazine, 1945
- Power of the Black Press
- campaigns for integrated sports
- organized boycotts against Birth of a Nation
- covered race riots
- investigated lynchings
- Civil Rights
- Brown v. Board of Education decision, 1954
- murder of Emmett Till, 1955
- covered nonviolent protests
- bus boycotts
- lawsuits
- lunch counter sit-ins
- mainstream press was late to cover the issue
- New York Times v. Sullivan
- Supreme Court decision, 1964
- Birmingham, Alabama police commissioner Louis B. Sullivan sued New York Times for libel
- Supreme Court ruled against Sullivan
- established current standard for libel, defamation must be…
- false
- published
- damaging
- for public officials, done with “actual malice”
- Vietnam War
- began at the end of World War II
- French attempt to establish their colonies
- United States created a weak regime in South throughout the 1960s
- US military withdrew forces in 1975
- exhausting guerrilla warfare
- series of military defeats
- Vietnam War News Coverage
- US government did not censor news coverage
- public opinion turned against war
- Tet Offensive, February 1968
- David Halberstam: the war “was doomed”
- Neil Sheehan: “war was lost on the ground before it was lost in American public opinion”
- television: Living Room War
- effect: military carefully managed “press pools”
- Pentagon Papers
- secret history of the war drawn up by the US military
- US had “systematically lied, not only to the public, but also to Congress” about the war
- Daniel Ellsberg leaked the “Pentagon Papers” to New York Times and Washington Post
- US government sued to stop the publication
- Supreme Court ruled against government, publication did not present a “clear and present danger” or cause “grave or irreparable” damage.
- leaks would become a central issue in the Watergate break-in and cover-up
- Decline of American Newspapers
- digital, non-print era of newspapers
- between 2007 and 2014, US newspapers lost
- ⅔ of traditional advertising revenue
- ⅓ of circulation
- ¾ of stock valuations
- revealed a broken business model for newspapers
- undermined journalism
- Robert McChesney, “investigative journalism is on the endangered speicies list”
- news would become divisive rather than unifying, e.g. Fox News
- Newspapers as Businesses
- Newspaper Preservation Act, 1970
- allowed consolidated business operations, but kept separate editorial departments
- allowed newspapers to become local monopolies
- new technologies made newspapers very profitable
- switch from linotype to Lumitype
- switch from letterpress to offset printing
- newspapers became targets of Wall Street
- not responsible for serving public interest
- focus would move towards profitability
- publishers laid off newsroom staff to boost profits
- Competition from Digital
- digital siphoned away most:
- circulation
- classified advertising
- display advertising