Posted on 07/12/2020 11:04:33 AM PDT by conservatism_IS_compassion
Many of America’s great newspapers have moved away from even the pretense of political neutrality. That tradition dates to 1835, when a Scottish immigrant named James Gordon Bennett founded the New York Herald.
. . . The Herald was something new under the journalistic sun. Newspapers had previously dealt either with narrow subjects, such as shipping or financial news, or were openly partisan, sometimes even subsidized by a political party.
. . . Bennett was responsible for an enormous was responsible for an enormous number of journalistic innovations of journalistic innovations. The Herald was the first general interest newspaper to include the weather report, provide sports coverage and include a daily stock table. It was the first to include an illustration in a story.
. . . By the 1850s Bennett's innovations had utterly transformed American journalism. The Herald had the largest circulation in the country.
. . . But much of the presses power to influence public opinion came from what was perhaps Bennett's greatest journalistic idea of all. He made the Herald politically neutral, printing opinion columns only on the editorial page. In his news pages he printed what he thought the readers will want to know, not what he wanted to tell them.
The idea spread quickly through the journalism industry, greatly enhancing its influence and prestige. Its abandonment may have the opposite effect. Its abandonment may have the opposite effect.
(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...
It’s interesting to note that Professor Larry Sweikart (hi, LS) attributes to Martin van Buren the foundation of the first true political party - the Democrat Party - two years before the 1828 election of Andrew Jackson as that party’s first president.In addition to flat out bribing people with jobs, MVB sought to indoctrinate them by for the first time ever creating a large number of "newspapers" that would do nothing but parrot party propaganda. That was it. They were NOT to report "news."Martin Van Buren was of course Jackson’s second-term VP, and - until GHWB was elected in 1988 - was the only post-12th Amendment sitting VP to be elected POTUS.We are talking full blown Baghdad Bobs here. MVB hired many of the editors himself. ALL were "Jackson men." No deviation was permitted.
One editor of a prominent paper was asked his views on certain subjects. "My views are those of Andrew Jackson."
MVB's DemoKKKrat Party subsidized almost all of these papers. There was no such thing as an "objective" paper.Compare also my contention that the 1848 foundation of the Associated Press created a continuous virtual meeting of all major news outlets and inevitably, over time, formed the journalism cartel we know as “the MSM” with LS’sOne scholarly investigation of antebellum papers (or is that Lady Antebellum Papers?) found that at least 85% of all "newspapers" were totally controlled by 1 party
after the Civil War, where it briefly "appeared" to change for a while (about 75 years), but it never has left its roots.
Ping.
I’m not that old, relatively speaking, but I can’t ever remember a time when journalists did not pursue their agenda in their reports. I can’t ever remember a time when media were “politically neutral.”
Past tense.
There’s a recent issue of a dvd set of the old time TV series Deadline. Described on the listing as “When reporters were heroes” and they risked their lives to face up to the criminals and corrupt politicians who threatened them for printing the facts.
Makes honest journalism sound as outdated as the Age of the Dinosaurs.
A couple of generations of liberal journalism school students, have been inspired by Woodward and Bernstein going after Nixon.
Nixon was taken down by the media in 1973-74, however, their resentment of Nixon went all the way back to when Nixon was on the “wrong” side of the Alger Hiss case in the late 1940s.
So I too, am not sure when this “golden age” of “responsible” journalism was. Was it in the lifetimes of any of us?
Tell all the gang at Forty-Second Street, that I will soon be there;
Whisper of how I'm yearning to mingle with the old time throng;
Give my regards to old Broadway and say that I'll be there ere long.
Was this article written by Jimmy two times? :-)
They’ve never been politically neutral.
So I too, am not sure when this “golden age” of “responsible” journalism was. Was it in the lifetimes of any of us?
Only so far as some of the old movies from the 40s depicted responsible journalism. Since then it is has been a death spin for honesty into political bias. Still, it was not even unbiased then. Many of the old gangs like the outfit in Chicago had their go to guys to paint over any bad pub.
True to a large extent. But there used to be a few paragraphs in most stories with "A GOP spokesman disagreed and said..." or "A supporter stood outside the headquarters and said he still was in favor...." These would be relegated to minor coverage but there was actual coverage, usually. And very few ever pushed their personally biased viewpoint editorial statements at the beginning of a "news" story. On page twenty, maybe, but not on the "news" pages. Now they say "In another unsupported by facts tweet, President Trump again misstated the...."
True, Walter Cronkite (blatant Dem/socialist supporter as he later reminisced) had a puff piece, upbeat, adulatory interview of Jimmy Carter in his CBS convention booth and another of Andrew Young comparing Carter to eminent Civil Rights leaders. Just like today: cutesy questions to make Chelsea laugh and interview with Ivanka to jab and prod her into getting angry about the slanders they demanded she admit to about her father. Disgraceful.
The WSJ article is propaganda. Never in our lifetimes which are 73, and 75 years have either my wife, or myself ever noted “Political Neutrality” that we can recall, and neither of us has Dementia.
yup....from the first days of the Republic every broadsheet/news paper openly declared their political positions.
And the current “Journalism Schools” teach neutrality in reporting are as common as the Hope Diamond.
Cronkite exposed what he was when he announced we had lost the war in 1968 (Tet).
Nixon was taken down by the media in 1973-74, however, their resentment of Nixon went all the way back to when Nixon was on the “wrong” side of the Alger Hiss case in the late 1940s.
So I too, am not sure when this “golden age” of “responsible” journalism was. Was it in the lifetimes of any of us?
All true, but Walter Duranty was acting as a propagandist and shill for the Communist Party of the USSR and the COMINTERN back in the 1930s.
Was this article written by Jimmy two times? :
I didn’t get it the first time,the first time
I now gotta go get the paper, get the paper
Problem was, I had to enter the text myself from by dead-tree copy. I used “dictate” to do it - and have no idea why it duplicated so much.
“Was this article written by Jimmy two times?”
I’m going to go get the papers,get the papers.
Lol
I'm semi-old, 70, and I only barely remember it. The Cuban Missile Crisis was and is portrayed as a great victory led by great Democrat President John F. Kennedy. As I've grown older I realize that Russian Nikita Khrushchev actually got EXACTLY what he wanted.
The "Cuban Missile Crisis" consisted of 4 events: 1) US puts missiles in Turkey; 2) the USSR puts missiles in Cuba; 3) The USSR withdraws missiles from Cuba; 4) the US withdraws missiles from Turkey. The press calls events 2 and 3 "The Cuban Missile Crisis", ignoring events 1 and 4. But at least they were pro-American in those days.
Since the communist Tet Offensive of 1968, we've had a very much anti-American press.
Maybe not neutral, but there is a major difference between your newspaper from 1977 and the ones today that are just Buzzfeed/Gawker clones.
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