One of the first things I did upon arriving in Washington was to locate the nearest bookstore. Being an English major, I needed a literary fix, and being a nerd, I wanted my reading to be thematically appropriate with the location. After nearly an hour of bending up and down, crawling around, and generally scouring the American history section, I struck gold with Eric Burns’ Infamous Scribblers: The Founding Fathers and the Rowdy Beginnings of American Journalism.
The book examines the Revolutionary Era when the press was sprinkled with thoughtful prose (Ben Franklin) and scholarly examination (The Federalist Papers), yet dominated by incendiary partisanship and slanderous sensationalism of which our Founding Fathers were not innocent.
Burns calls this founding era of American journalism the "gutter age of American reporting." Trash accusations were thrown about, names were called, and fingers were pointed. Nonetheless, at the end of the book’s introduction, Burns contends that if the settlers of the nation "were to watch our television newscasts and listen to the verbal butcheries on our opinion programs on all-news cable and talk radio, even the loudest of them, even the coarsest, the most mean-spirited ... they would be startled by, and perhaps not altogether approving of, the extent to which we have tamed the wildly inglorious impulses of their journalism."
When I first read that sentence, my gut told me that whatever Burns was trying to say made sense; however, upon further examination, the beginning and end of this conclusion struck me as contradictory. On talk-radio and cable news today’s reporters are committing the same crimes of partisanship and sensationalism that their predecessors did, but Burns claims that, concurrently, the excesses of early journalism have been dampened in a way that provokes mild disapproval.
My question is why. Why would our first set of "rabble-rousers" censure those who purportedly carry on this legacy? Perhaps it is an issue of clarity and transparency. The Revolutionary Era press made no excuses or pretentions to being unbiased; their political leanings and accusations were not matters to be hidden. Alexander Hamilton wrote of his strong belief that Thomas Jefferson was the devil incarnate, and Sam Adams used his publication as a radical, political soapbox. Today’s programs, though, lay claim to the mantle of objective reporting with programs like No Bull, No Bias, and even infamously right-leaning networks like FOX are recognized by their slogan "Fair and Balanced." Yet, still many shows and personalities depend on an ability to be controversial to draw audiences and sell news, akin to the manner in which the Penny Press morphed into a ware to be hawked.
While I do agree with the first half of Burns' assertion, how and whether the press has been tamed still eludes me. If anything, the advent of 24 hour news has created a more "wildly inglorious" environment in which crime and sex persist in selling better than policy and journalists are "personalities." But maybe, just maybe, Burns is right. Amid the petty fighting and caterwauling, has news been tamed by corporate preferences of political parties, and is no longer able to stand as separate from the government or from big business as originally hoped?
In a time when newspapers are shrinking and being overtaken by flashy graphics and loud noises, the challenge of being heard has become even more difficult, and thus, even more important. The ability of the press to express personal passions may have been subjugated to the preferences of others, but the voice of the people has not. The mission of Massey Media is to ensure that progressive voices are heard within these institutions, enabling them to raise a clamor and carry on the revolutionary tradition of a government by and for the people.
- Kimberly Killen