In the April issue of The Atlantic Monthly, veteran journalist James Fallows contributes an essay in defense of the so-called new media. Defined by the proliferation of internet sites that cater to niche "news" markets, the new media emphasizes, among other popular topics, celebrity gossip and overheated partisanship. In the article, Fallows gives special attention to veteran news anchors (most significantly, Ted Koppel) who bemoan what they see as the trivialization of news, a decline in journalistic standards, and the abandonment of impartial reporting. Taking these critiques in turn, the author concludes that the new media, while certainly very different from its immediate predecessor, is not necessarily a worse incarnation of news and information. He asserts that the new media, which he acknowledges is "shallow, divisive, and unreliable," simply is providing content its audience wants, rather than dictating what kind of news and information it should consume.
News has never been immune from bias, and it always has been produced with specific intents. The first colonial newspapers, for instance, essentially were advertising sheets produced by merchants and booksellers. In other words, they were not a novel form of dispensing news; they were a novel form of advertising. During the crises that preceded the American Revolution, newspaper owner/editors began to realize that political content attracted even more readers. In the young republic, most newspapers improved on this method of building readership by allying themselves with specific political parties in order to attract patronage form party leaders and subscriptions from party members. These papers were unapologetically biased, and they consistently served up editorials and correspondent articles that celebrated the pure and intelligent motives of their own party while lashing the venal and base character of their opponents. For those readers unmoved by politics, these newspapers gloried in detailed accounts of grisly crimes, horrible fires, and destructive natural disasters. These papers rivaled Jacobean theater in their eagerness to provide their audience with spectacles of blood, gore, and death. The dominant news media of this period thus conceived of "news" as information that incited and titillated.
As an example of the new ethic (or lack thereof) in the digital media, Fallows alludes to the decision by the gossip site, Gawker, to pay a man for his story of having had a tryst with Delaware's recent Republican nominee for Senate, Christine O'Donnell. Perhaps Gawker could learn a few things from perusing partisan newspapers from the 19th century. Democratic journals in late 19th century New York did not have to pay anyone for salacious stories about the state's Republican leaders. Instead, they invented such stories themselves, including the rumor that Theodore Roosevelt, then an up and coming young Republican, was gay. Their thinly veiled, lurid euphemisms about the political neophyte's sexual orientation dangerously skirted libel.
Fallows' article also questions whether the new media has inflamed our political discourse and made it more rancorous. Political commentary in the media of late does often appear to be shallow, bombastic and generally dismal, but this also is not without precedent. One of the lasting images of my dissertation research was an account in the Albany Argus of how New York State Attorney General John Van Buren, son of the former president, sent "an organized gang of ruffians" to attack his intra-party rivals at the Albany County Democratic convention in 1846. Despite the fact that Van Buren's goons punched, kicked, stomped and even stabbed numerous convention delegates, his victims made peace with him in time to unite behind a common slate of candidates for county offices that election year. On May 17 that same year, the Democratic Cleveland Plain Dealer, angry over Ohio Whig Senator Tom Corwin's opposition to the country's ongoing war with Mexico, insinuated that the senator committed the possibly treasonous act of sending copies of one of his anti-war speeches to Mexican General Santa Anna to distribute among his troops. This thoroughly unfounded rumor likely was an item of keen interest to the Plain Dealer's loyal Democratic readers. Whatever the nineteenth century news media might have been, it certainly was not demure.
Obviously, the new media differs in substantial ways from earliest forms of news in this country. Web-based metrics that chart customers' consumer habits and consumption patterns (including such minutiae as the average time we spend "reading" any one page of online content) allow media providers mind-bogging flexibility and specificity in marketing their products to the public. Yet, the shiny new packaging of web-based and television media should not blind us to the fact that its content is not terribly novel. It is as much a reversion to older "pre-professional" concepts of news, as it is an innovative form of information. The "unbiased" news media, whose passing the supercilious Ted Koppel laments, simply was not the historical norm. In fact, one could argue that it never really existed, at least not in the way that it is being fondly remembered by the titans of the "old" media.
Ted Koppel is concerned....that we are not paying attention to Ted Koppel
Fallows presents this as a revolutionary change in our media, but in some ways, we've seen this story before. The new media might be new in form, but there is nothing new or revolutionary in its content. Up until the very late 19th century, the country's dominant media, newspapers, largely were overheated, blatantly partisan, sensationalistic rags. And they were tremendously popular as a result. They espoused specific worldviews and were not a reliable source of so-called "objective" news. The false notion that news could be impartial, judicious, and nonpartisan has been a relatively recent and quite possibly short-lived phenomenon in our country's media history. As scholars across disciplines have demonstrated, bias is inherent in every form of communication in which we engage, for it not only influences how we communicate, but the very decision to communicate.News has never been immune from bias, and it always has been produced with specific intents. The first colonial newspapers, for instance, essentially were advertising sheets produced by merchants and booksellers. In other words, they were not a novel form of dispensing news; they were a novel form of advertising. During the crises that preceded the American Revolution, newspaper owner/editors began to realize that political content attracted even more readers. In the young republic, most newspapers improved on this method of building readership by allying themselves with specific political parties in order to attract patronage form party leaders and subscriptions from party members. These papers were unapologetically biased, and they consistently served up editorials and correspondent articles that celebrated the pure and intelligent motives of their own party while lashing the venal and base character of their opponents. For those readers unmoved by politics, these newspapers gloried in detailed accounts of grisly crimes, horrible fires, and destructive natural disasters. These papers rivaled Jacobean theater in their eagerness to provide their audience with spectacles of blood, gore, and death. The dominant news media of this period thus conceived of "news" as information that incited and titillated.
As an example of the new ethic (or lack thereof) in the digital media, Fallows alludes to the decision by the gossip site, Gawker, to pay a man for his story of having had a tryst with Delaware's recent Republican nominee for Senate, Christine O'Donnell. Perhaps Gawker could learn a few things from perusing partisan newspapers from the 19th century. Democratic journals in late 19th century New York did not have to pay anyone for salacious stories about the state's Republican leaders. Instead, they invented such stories themselves, including the rumor that Theodore Roosevelt, then an up and coming young Republican, was gay. Their thinly veiled, lurid euphemisms about the political neophyte's sexual orientation dangerously skirted libel.
Fallows' article also questions whether the new media has inflamed our political discourse and made it more rancorous. Political commentary in the media of late does often appear to be shallow, bombastic and generally dismal, but this also is not without precedent. One of the lasting images of my dissertation research was an account in the Albany Argus of how New York State Attorney General John Van Buren, son of the former president, sent "an organized gang of ruffians" to attack his intra-party rivals at the Albany County Democratic convention in 1846. Despite the fact that Van Buren's goons punched, kicked, stomped and even stabbed numerous convention delegates, his victims made peace with him in time to unite behind a common slate of candidates for county offices that election year. On May 17 that same year, the Democratic Cleveland Plain Dealer, angry over Ohio Whig Senator Tom Corwin's opposition to the country's ongoing war with Mexico, insinuated that the senator committed the possibly treasonous act of sending copies of one of his anti-war speeches to Mexican General Santa Anna to distribute among his troops. This thoroughly unfounded rumor likely was an item of keen interest to the Plain Dealer's loyal Democratic readers. Whatever the nineteenth century news media might have been, it certainly was not demure.
Obviously, the new media differs in substantial ways from earliest forms of news in this country. Web-based metrics that chart customers' consumer habits and consumption patterns (including such minutiae as the average time we spend "reading" any one page of online content) allow media providers mind-bogging flexibility and specificity in marketing their products to the public. Yet, the shiny new packaging of web-based and television media should not blind us to the fact that its content is not terribly novel. It is as much a reversion to older "pre-professional" concepts of news, as it is an innovative form of information. The "unbiased" news media, whose passing the supercilious Ted Koppel laments, simply was not the historical norm. In fact, one could argue that it never really existed, at least not in the way that it is being fondly remembered by the titans of the "old" media.
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