Political Neutrality Is What Made American Newspapers Great

The Wall Street Journal ^ | July 10, 2020 | John Steele Gordon

[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.

[faithhopecharity]

Hey! Its gonna be a contest between the Plattsburg (NY) Press-Republican and the Santa Rosa (CA) Press-Democrat!

we can toss in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, the Rochester (NY) Democrat and Chronicle, and the Arizona Republic(an) .. just for added fun!

But of course a paper needn’t be so honest as to put its bias in its title, to be seriously biased. Consider the NY,Slimes, Washington Compost, LA Slimes, SF Comical, and Boston Globe.

[Bratch]

The idea of honest muckraking reporters is a fictitious product of Hollywood and the comic books.

[Savage Beast]

Well there is certainly no greatness in the 21st century mainstream news media.

[Rastus]

And you see conservatives across social media saying, “Why are there no Walter Cronkites today? 😍😍😍” I lost a friend by telling her, “What are you talking about? He was the worst propagandist of them all!”

[aimhigh]

I remember reading an article about Abraham Lincoln’s death. Several anti-Lincoln newspaper buildings were burnt to the ground.

[poconopundit]

As a class, journalists cover a wide territory.  There are the apprentice reporters who are covering simple topics and working a certain town or city beat.  Then there are the national commentators like Fox's Gregg Jarrett and hundreds more.

Sooner or later, I suspect every writer wants the thrill of being a kind of swashbuckler.  Covering local stories has lost much of its intrigue.  A journalist wants to inject his own style and stand above the run-of-the-mill working-wage writers.  Eventually that leads to the desire to be a commentator like Rush Limbaugh or Don Leamon of CNN.

Perhaps the greatest American journalist was H. L. Mencken who got his start working the city streets of Baltimore in the early 1900s. As a young man in his early 20s, he became a personality in his area of town.  He knew the policemen, the bartenders, shop owners, and he got free tickets to the vaudeville shows.  He absolutely loved that work.

Then, when the great Baltimore Fire occurred in 1904 (destroying 1,500 buildings in the central city area) Mencken worked like a mad man reporting stories, and not sleeping for 72 consecutive hours.

Mencken was a great talent, so it wasn't long before he became the key editor and writer for the newspapers he worked for.

But a few years later, Mencken started gravitating to commentary -- editorial writing and eventually became the most read columnist in America.  At the same time, Mencken poured himself into fiction and non-fiction books and became America's foremost literary critic.  Then, as if he didn't have enough to do, he also became a terrific researcher, and published major tomes on subjects such as the American Language, and Democracy in America.

But at some point, journalism became far more corrupted. Tom Brokaw, David Brinkley, and Dan Rather had their opinions, but they successfully hid their bias.  Today, the Fake News commentators outright lie about the facts and don't even feel shame when their lies are exposed.

And I think the answer is that money and fame talks.  Plus the Leftists liars reinforce each other -- and it becomes a badge of pride that Trump tweeted his anger at them.

The other infuriating thing is these sophomoric jesters pretend they know everything, yet most of them have no business experience nor any skin-in-the-game knowledge of any trade besides writing.

So their opinions are often sheer speculation and fantasy.  They are, in fact, Intellectual Yet Idiots.

But I'm very hopeful for the future because I see lots of intelligent, conservative commentators becoming visible through social media.  Ultimately, these free and innovative thinkers — most of them self-made men and women — will steadily destroy the Fake News. Thanks to them, Democracy will NOT die in darkness... however the Washington Post's reputation will keep sinking.

[catnipman]

“Political Neutrality Is What Made American Newspapers Great”

American media has NEVER been neutral, ranging from propagating and supporting Soviet propaganda in the 1920’s to the consistent war-mongering of the Hearst newspapers and Walter Cronkite’s continuous lies about the Vietnam war ...

and of course back in the days of Washington, Adams, Hamilton and Jefferson, most newspapers were EXPLICITLY aligned with one party or the other, essentially functioning as party organs ...

it’s ALWAYS been a lie that the media was “neutral” ...

[PGalt]

Thanks for the ping/post; thread. How did we get here - history/current events BUMP!

[V K Lee]

PP, it was quite a shock to see Rush and Don in the same sentence. Other than in Don’s dreams, the two are not comparable. Never gave thought to the news in the 1960’s.
Took what was presented at face value.

Interest increased at the time Ronald Reagan ran against Jimmy Carter. And by the time of Nixon and his fall from Grace the ‘news’ was all over the place. Confusing, contradictory. Not knowing what to believe. Rather took it to the extreme and should have been a warning to all.

Just as Franklin’s post office dream has been warped by d’rats, our ‘news’ is another nail pulled from the structure. When it completely fails and falls, will there be anything to remain that is salvageable?

Thanks for the image of Errol Flynn. :-)

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

IMHO the Herald could have been both heavily biased and far less biased than was the standard of the day. Thus, a breath of fresh air.

But the devil is in the details. The big “detail” being what is and what is not “news.” Maybe the Herald of the day was less political in its choice of stories, but the axiom that “If it bleeds, it leads” is and always was true. And that readily translates into a bias against society - hence, for big government.

And such being the case, arguing that a negative perspective is “politically neutral” translates into cynicism.

[dp0622]

It’s an important article and the reference to Goodfellas was good for a joke in these stressful times

do not have one major media outlet on the right is incredible. And I can’t think of any network that just states the news these days

[Grampa Dave]

Thanks for the excellent history lesson in how bias our mediots have been since Andrew Jackson and basically what we call/label as democrats.

The New York Slimes is still doing what this political cartoon from Puck magazine in 1888 showed the world.

Thanks to RayChuang88 for the above history lesson.

[Right Wing Assault]

It takes brains, training, honesty, and self-control to report both (or more) sides.

Today, no brains, no training, no honesty, and certainly no self-control.

[cgbg]

I have no objection to any media having political bias—as long as they have warning labels or equivalent.

Warning—This newspaper is owned by a billionaire whose agenda includes the following:

—Reducing the population of the planet to one-tenth of its current size
—Maintaining a monopoly of political and economic power by eliminating the middle class throughout the world
.....

This newspaper is a propaganda organ that can be hazardous to your mental health. It is not to be used by children or in any educational setting.

[polymuser]

“But at least they were pro-American in those days.”

Yep. Now, they’re openly anti-American, anti-capitalist. anti-Christian, anti-white and pro-socialist/communist.

Today’s proggie propagandists want to see America broken badly, then ‘rescued’ by socialist leaders.

[LS]

Lou,
Even more than that. Journalists took it as a matter of pride that they could write stories in such a way that no one could figure out their party ID.

I had a socialist, yes, socialist friend and colleague at the University who was exactly that way. He used to boast, rightly that “my students do not know how I vote.”

Now, around 1913, the American Society of Editors and Reporters (may have the exact title wrong) developed guidelines for a professional press. I later spoke with a beat reporter for the Chicago Tribune in the 50s and 60s. Some of the things that were DRILLED into them were

*No unsourced info or quotations. ALL key comments and statistics must be sourced
*Two or more sources for all sourced quotations.
*Always tell the “other side of the story.” At the time, he noted, this did NOT mean that if you are CNN talking about a Trump policy you go find a “republican” like Jenny the Ugly Lyin’ Red Rubin to talk about Trump. You get one of his most trusted people to give his side of the story. My reporter friend said that it was essential that you told the “other side of the story” with the same conviction, weight of evidence, and number of sources you did the first side.

[LS]

True, but from about 1865 to 1960, in fact they viewed it as their JOB to appear neutral and to seek neutral writing. See my comment to Lou above.

I helped with a great book by Jim Kuypers, a communications prof at VA Tech called “Partisan Journalism,” and yes, for about 100 years most papers abandoned political slant except for the editorial page. This was due to business reasons-—at the time, they lived off subscriptions (unlike papers from 1830-1865 or unlike media today, which is bankrolled by huge lib corporations and can ignore viewers or readers).

There were exceptions like Walter Duranty, but the beat reporters prided themselves on people NOT being able to tell their party affiliation by their articles.

[poconopundit]

Yeah,V K. Rather was the first tough journalist. Then along came Sam Donaldson.

Now it’s gotten entirely out of hand. Rather and Donaldson were top commentators with a name. Now, a nobody journalist wants to gain fame by standing up to Trump.

It got ridiculous. So that’s why you don’t see the President giving press briefings anymore. At last we’ve got Kayleigh Shillelagh to dish it back to these disrespectful, petulant children.

Can’t remember a time when the Dems and media have dug themselves into a deep hole like they have today.

What frightens me is the Nancy Pelosi is third in line to be President and when asked the other day about people tearing down statues, she nonchalantly said, “People do what they do.”