I happen to know a lot about journalism and the newspaper industry, its history and all that. The industry was more or less launched in North America by Ben Franklin, who, before he got into politics, was a printer and made a fortune selling what amounted to print business franchises in the North American colonies. You could go to Ben and he'd set you up with a press imported from England, sets of fonts, paper suppliers, and a copy of "Poor Richard's Almanack," which offered self-help axioms to use as "filler" so you wouldn't have to leave a column empty. I do believe he even offered training.
The first newspapers were not much more than broadsides, kinda like little posters printed only one side and pasted up all over the place. They served as ads for printing services and other local businesses who would buy space in them to advertise. That's how printers made a living between other, larger jobs. Some printers still do this. And the weekly bundle of grocery store ads and coupons folded into the Sunday paper is the same type of thing.
Anyway, back in the colonies, printers began adding local news to their broadsides, commentaries from local politicians, accounts of the Governor's Ball, letters from travelers in France and Spain. People began paying for the information. These "newspapers" were sold by subscription.
By the time the US became a nation, the newspaper industry was well underway. For example, Jefferson was rather unhappy that he was compelled to "buy" or sponsor a newspaper to present his side and counteract the "news" spread by his political opponents.
When high-speed, steam-powered web presses came into being, along with them came the rise of mass circulation newspapers. At the time, these were most notably New York papers. You've heard of Horace Greeley? ("Go west, young man....") He was the very powerful publisher of the New York Tribune, which began offering nationwide subscriptions and also was one of the papers that founded the Associated Press wire service. His steam-powered rotary (web) press could crank out thousands of copies of a paper overnight. This was unheard of previously.
The New York Herald, Greeley's most competitive rival that eventually eclipsed the Trib, began selling newspapers on street corners rather than only by subscritpion -- considerably broadening its local circulation -- and also began running lurid crime stories and social scandals.
You can gauge the power of these newspapers pretty simply. Greeley was one of the people who founded the Republican Party. And at the time, his was the only newspaper with a nationwide circulation. In addition, the wire services allowed for newspapers all across the country to pick up and reprint stories from the Trib, Herald, and a few others on their own pages. The Republican Party went from zero to getting Lincoln elected to the presidency in about 15 years. Of course, there were some pretty hot issues at the time, too. But Lincoln was a Nobody from Podunk -- famous only for opposing Stephen Douglas for a Senate seat -- until Greeley took notice of him and began to promote him across the country as one of a field of anti-slavery Republican presidential candidates.
Radio and TV hadn't been invented yet, neither were telephones. Newspapers, private letters, and stories carried by travelers were the only way anyone knew what was happening outside of their own communities. And the newspapers were all extremely and forthrightly biased, unashamedly editorializing on the front page, promoting one or another candidate for public office, taking sides on issues like slavery, secession and on and on. Many of them also routinely published poetry and short stories.
The idea of unbiased reporting was born only during the Civil War, and then just barely. But the folks back home had husbands, sons, brothers on the front lines and they wanted to know -- really know -- what was going on. So the papers began to focus on publishing factual information, usually with either some element of rah-rah! cheerleading or sharp criticism still intermingled. For example, it was the newspapers that published the casualty lists after the battles, and before any soldier's mother got a letter from the State Dept. For all of the above reasons, newspapers are an interesting source of information on "color" in history, or public opinion, but they aren't really useful sources of factual historical data.
Newspapers and news as a source of some kind of unvarnished truth without personal opinion is largely a creature of the 20th century. I've worked as a journalist and an editor, and I believe "objective reporting" to be a crock. No matter how hard any individual tries, you cannot tell a story and keep your personal slant out of it. The bias comes out not only in word choice (was it a "mob" or an "assembly of concerned citizens"?), but also in what an editor or publisher chooses to publish.
For example, there are only two known photographs of Franlin Delano Roosevelt in a wheelchair, and those were taken by friends, not members of the press. A lot of people still are unaware that FDR had polio and couldn't walk or stand without assistance. And I've never seen any photos of Comrade Osama with a cigarette in hand, either.
So, you're the publisher or editor. Do you go with the story about Michael Jackson's death, or about passing the cap-and-tax bill through the House of Representatives?
The press says the public dictates what they publish. To some extent, this is true. The public buys the papers, and this income covers part of the cost of production -- but only part. Most of the costs are still covered by advertisers, the same as in Ben Franklin's day, and this is true of TV and radio as well as printed media.
And the public doesn't have a whole lot of choice in what it reads or sees on TV news, either, does it? For the public, the news is like a buffet. They might be able to choose from the baby back ribs and cornbread or the spaghetti and tossed salad, but although steak and potatoes exist, they may not be on the menu.
I've been an editor. Periodically you assemble all the "news" that might be "important" to readers in one way or another. Then you pick what you think is really important -- because you've got limited space and you can't run it all. The really, really important stuff goes up front where most people will see it. The rest is kinda tucked into various departments or on the bottom of page six. These choices are pretty much driven by your own judgment, which includes your own biases. There's just no way around it.
The alternative, particularly in a field like politics where differing opinions proliferate, is to present as many different perspectives as you can gather. That's why I like Fox News. They go back to the original paradigm, when newspapers called themselves the Hoboken Democrat, the Pittsburgh Whig, or the Cincinnati Advertiser. You know where the guys at Fox are coming from. And they invite the self-identified advocates from the other side to argue and debate their views -- honestly. My one beef with Fox is that they often take on major, very complicated issues without enough time to fully air both sides. But at least they try.
That's about as fair as it gets. Much fairer than those news outlets that sincerely believe they have a lock on "truth," then proceed to tell the story through their eyes only, with commentary from people with similar and supporting opinions.
Most of the very sophisticated and better known journalists live in a world where they all pretty much believe the same thing: religion is the "opiate of the masses"; socialism is historically inevitable; anyone who was raised west of the Mississippi, or really, west of the Appalachians, except California, is probably an ignorant hayseed; and they have better biases than anyone else. Oh, and anyone who labors in the vineyards of the Ivy League is probably an omnipotent genius.
Anyway, since the Washington Post has long proclaimed that it has a lock on truth, I was really stunned to see that they were offering to sell access to their reporters and to apparently "unnamed highly-placed sources" in the administration at a series of proposed $25,000-per-plate soirees. And these would all unfold in a friendly and non-confrontational atmosphere. Sorta like you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours? Sorta like selling out to advertisers, or to whomever can pay the price of admission?
I mean, really, is it any wonder that Comrade Osama was elected? We're talking about an exclusive insider club of media professionals who have access to nationwide information channels and who, by and large, probably all suffer from liberal guilt to one degree or another. Let's pay no attention to the fact that the man is a socialist; he's part black, so that must be good for the country, which has ever been torn by racial conflicts. Beside that, most of those in the insiders' club got there because they pander to the elitest drivel that embraces socialism as "enlightenment."
It's all a bunch of hogwash. The very fact that the Washington Post wasn't bothered about selling their powerful megaphone to the highest bidder is sort of a tip-off. They were probably thinking, Well, those who pay for these soirees can tell us anything they like, but we'll ferret out the "truth." The Post seems to be blind to the fact that at these soirees, they'd only hear one side of any story. But apparently all they need is one side, if that side agrees with their own biases.
For most of them, only one side really exists. After all, we all know what's "good," what's "right," and what everyone should believe in. If you have any questions about any of this, I'm sure Sally Quinn and Paul Krugman will be more than happy to explain it in language you can understand.
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