Communications Chapter 3 Homework History Fake News February Http back story radio org shows fit to print Yochai Benkler Robert Faris Hal

Unlock access to all the studying documents.

View Full Document

Chapter 3

Newspapers to Digital Frontiers: Journalism’s Journey

CHAPTER OUTLINE

Chapter Opener: Nellie Bly reporting undercover on conditions in a mental hospital was called

“stunt journalism” in the 1880s, but it was the forerunner of modern investigative journalism.

I. The Early History of American Journalism

The first American newspapers took a number of different formats and included a variety of

topics, but each fulfilled the “need to know.”

A. Colonial Newspapers and the Partisan Press. Many of these partisan newspapers

focused on politics and were the forerunner of today’s editorial pages. Others focused

on commercial news and were the forerunner of today’s business sections.

B. The Penny Press: Becoming a Mass Medium. Cheaper paper and higher literacy rates in

the 1830s caused a wave of penny papers, which were sold at newsstands instead of by

subscription.

II. The Evolution of Newspaper Journalism: Competing Models and the Rise of

Professionalism

By the late 1890s, two types of journalism competed for readers: A story–driven model was

supported by the penny papers and the yellow press, and the facts model was advocated by

the six–cent papers.

A. “Objectivity” and Professionalization in Modern Journalism. To attract more readers,

newspapers began to strive for impartiality in reporting, letting readers interpret the

facts they presented.

1. Adolph Ochs and the New York Times. After buying the New York Times in 1896,

Ochs reinvented the news model by emphasizing substantial news coverage and

provocative editorial pages and downplaying sensationalistic stories.

III. Journalism Evolves across Media

Nearly every new mass medium from radio to the Internet has included some form of

journalism, but the converged media of the Internet have been the catalyst for some of the

biggest changes in journalism since its earliest days.

A. Journalism on the Airwaves. President Franklin Roosevelt’s “Fireside Chats” and

Edward R. Murrow’s reporting of World War II air raids showed the unique

communication abilities of broadcast.

1. The Power of Visual Language. TV news reporters share many values with print

journalists, but the differences in the two media led them to develop a style of their

own defined by attractive, congenial newscasters skilled at getting “sound bites”

from sources.

IV. The Culture of News and Rituals of Reporting

Despite the differences among the various media, journalists share common principles and

practices for reporting and the news.

A. What Is News? Journalists have developed a set of criteria for determining whether

information is newsworthy: timeliness, proximity, conflict, prominence, human interest,

consequence, usefulness, novelty, and deviance.

B. Values in American Journalism. In the 1970s and 1980s, researchers began identifying

and critiquing the values that influences journalism.

1. Putting It in Neutral. Journalists generally believe that they should be unbiased

observers, which gives them more credibility and allows them to reach more readers

and viewers.

4. Getting a Story First. One of the most valued achievements for a reporter is to

“scoop” the competition and get the story first.

C. When Values Collide: Ethics and the News Media. Journalists regularly face ethical

dilemmas such as deciding when to protect government secrets for national security and

when to reveal those secrets to the public.

1. Professional Codes of Ethics. Journalists use ethical guidelines produced by

professional groups like the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) to help resolve

ethical dilemmas.

2. Applying Ethics and Values Inside the Job. Many times, journalists will rely on

V. The Economics of Journalism in the Twenty–First Century

The shrinking number of newsroom employees, particularly since the beginning of the

recession in 2007, is one of the biggest challenges facing journalism.

A. A Business Model in Transition. The majority of newspaper revenue has traditionally

come from advertising, though advertising revenue fell significantly after the recession

began in 2007. Since the recession and the digital turn, newspapers have been taking

steps to generate more online revenue; some sites use paywalls, which are subscription

fees that allow access to articles.

Newspaper Operations. Newspapers have to spend money on wages, supplies, and

services to be able to produce their product.

1. Salaries, Wages, and Shareholder Concerns. A major expense for most newspapers

is journalists’ salaries.

2. Wire Services and Feature Syndication. Many papers rely on wire services and

feature syndicates to supplement local coverage with national and international

VI. Changes and Challenges for Journalism in the Information Age

The guiding principle of journalism—that it provides the information citizens need to make

intelligent decisions—has been partially derailed.

A. Social Media. One of the fastest growing areas of research among those who study

journalism has been trying to determine the impact of social media’s rise.

1. Social Networking. Social media sites like Facebook and Twitter have changed the

way journalists report the news and consumers receive news, but the long–term

impact is still unknown.

2. Blogging. Widely read blogs have challenged newspapers’ authority, and in

response, many newspapers have added blogs by their reporters.

B. Citizen Journalism. Many news organizations are using the work of amateur journalists,

often concerned citizens or activists who use the Internet and blog sites to disseminate

news and information.

VII. Journalism in a Democratic Society

Journalism is central to democracy because it provides information that citizens need to

make informed decisions. Critics, though, say that journalists should work to improve daily

life and encourage public debate as well as report facts.

A. Social Responsibility. Some journalists have acknowledged that the profession has a

responsibility to think about sources as more than characters in their stories and that

readers have a responsibility as well to confront the problems in society.

LECTURE TOPICS

1. Discuss your local newspaper market. How does it correspond to the general history of

newspapers in the United States, especially in terms of types of newspapers, such as daily,

weekly, alternative, and minority–owned publications?

2. Discuss how newspapers adjusted to radio and television, and compare that to their reaction

to the Internet. Compare your local print newspaper to its online edition and online editions

of other national and international news organizations (see Lecture Spin–Offs).

3. Discuss the use of deceptive, invasive, and ethically conflicting practices that plague

American journalism.

LECTURE SPIN–OFFS

The Underground Press

• Politically alternative newspapers have a long history in the United States. In the early

twentieth century, the country’s largest–circulation weekly newspaper was Appeal to Reason,

a socialist paper. Circulation peaked at more than 760,000 copies in 1913, and its readers

were largely among the working class and immigrants. During World War I, though, the

government suppressed—sometimes violently—leftist newspapers.

• During the 1960s and 1970s, underground newspapers were popular on college campuses,

The Culture of News and Rituals of Reporting

• Brent Cunningham, managing editor of the Columbia Journalism Review, offered a pertinent

discussion of the principle of objectivity in “Re–thinking Objectivity” (CJR, July/August

2003, http://archives.cjr.org/feature/rethinking_objectivity.php). A failure of the press,

Cunningham writes, is “allowing the principle of objectivity to make [journalists] passive

recipients of news, rather than aggressive analyzers and explainers of it.” He argued that the

principle of objectivity can become an obstacle on the way to finding “truth” for several

reasons:

• Objectivity excuses lazy reporting; most reporting ends when a reporter has “both sides

of the story.”

• It exacerbates journalists’ tendency to rely on official sources, which makes it easier and

• Here’s what Jim Lehrer told Columbia Journalism Review Daily’s Liz Cox Barrett about

objective news reporting on June 6, 2006:

I don’t deal in terms like “blatantly untrue”…that’s for other people to decide…I’m not

in the judgment part of journalism. I’m in the reporting part of journalism.

• Here’s what fake reporter Rob Corddry said to Jon Stewart on The Daily Show on August 23,

2004:

Stewart: Doesn’t objectivity mean objectively weighing the evidence and calling out

what’s credible and what isn’t?

Corddry: Whoa–ho! Well, well, well—sounds like someone wants the media to act as a

filter! [high–pitched, effeminate] “Ooh, this allegation is spurious! Upon investigation

• In 2007, Washington Post reporter William M. Arkin took notice of the press box when he

went to a Red Sox game. He saw seven tiers of desks filled with reporters. In fact, it dawned

on him that more reporters were covering a baseball game than were covering the entire

Pentagon.

Considering the fans at the ballpark, Arkin also noted that they respected and depended

on sports reporters “for commentary and amplification and insight; they study and memorize

the statistics.” Arkin continued, “I’ve often thought if we could cover the military like sports,

with transparency and intimate knowledge and a play–by–play that was both affectionate and

• Here are some examples of journalism’s integrity problems:

• The failure of journalists to assess public opinion during the 2016 presidential campaign

has led to disillusionment among readers, listeners, and viewers. News organizations

consistently underestimated the appeal of Donald Trump during the Republican

primaries, and most news organizations predicted that Hillary Clinton was all but certain

to win the general election.

• Some reporters, often spurred by raw ambition, but sometimes also simply overwhelmed

by pressure, have either invented stories or plagiarized the work of others. Jayson Blair

and Stephen Glass are probably the most notorious perpetrators.

On May 11, 2003, the Sunday New York Times revealed that reporter Jayson Blair,

who had written for the Times for four years, had fabricated and plagiarized many of his

more than six hundred articles. The self–proclaimed “newspaper of record” stated that

Refer to the many issues raised by the paper’s public editors at:

Stephen Glass was a twenty–five–year–old associate editor at the New Republic who

had a reputation for being a whiz kid with the ability to track down the most unusual

stories. But he was forced out of his job in 1998 when it was revealed that he had

elaborately fabricated dozens of stories written for the New Republic, George, Rolling

Stone, Harper’s, and Policy Review, inventing quotes and characters to make his stories

more interesting. To cover his made–up work, Glass carefully created phony phone

messages, voice mails, fax numbers, notes, and letterheads to get past magazine fact–

Changes and Challenges for Journalism in the Information Age

• In addition to the coverage of fake news in the text (both in this chapter and in Chapter 13), a

number of interesting and informative articles and analyses on this topic were published in

late 2016 and 2017. Here are several that you may wish to touch on in the classroom:

Backstory, “Fit to Print? A History of Fake News,” February 20, 2017,

Yochai Benkler, Robert Faris, Hal Roberts, and Ethan Zuckerman, “Study: Breitbart–led

right–wing media ecosystem altered broader media agenda,” Columbia Journalism Review,

Scott Shane, “The Fake Americans Russia Created to Influence the Election,” New York

Alexander Smith and Vladimir Banic, “Fake News: How a Partying Macedonian Teen Earns

Thousands Publishing Lies,” NBC News, December 9, 2016,

Laura Sydell, “We Tracked Down a Fake-News Creator in The Suburbs. Here’s What We

Learned,” NPR, November 23,

David Uberti, “The real history of fake news,” Columbia Journalism Review, December 15,

Claire Wardel, “Fake News. It’s Complicated,” First Draft, February 16, 2017,

“

• Solo journalism (also called sojo or backpack journalism) is an increasing trend in reporting.

“Sojos” are journalists who perform, singlehandedly, the combined functions of a journalist,

photojournalist, videographer/editor, and blogger. Most often working in field locations,

sojos transmit stories, photos, and video via satellite phone, doing the work that is typically

At many dailies, reporters are working across platforms, writing breaking news for their

paper’s Web site, posting blog items, adding video journalism to the mix, and making audio

slide shows. See www.interactivenarratives.org for examples of interactive features produced

by newspaper sites.

• Crog is a shorthand term for “carefully researched weblog.” Although these sites tend to look

like blogs, they take a more analytical, serious approach and cover nearly every public issue,

• Nathan Lemann, in an August 7, 2006, New Yorker article called “Amateur Hour,” noted

some interesting parallels between pamphleteering in eighteenth–century England and

blogging. The printing press made pamphleteering easily affordable, so all of a sudden

• Key moments for bloggers:

• Matt Drudge, who created the protoblog The Drudge Report in 1995, broke the Clinton–

• Bloggers doggedly researched the 2005 CBS News report about George W. Bush’s

National Guard service and proved that the story was based on falsified documents. Their

persistence in covering this story ended with Dan Rather resigning. In 1968, Walter

• Mainstream journalists have blamed blogs for lowering journalistic standards, being

irresponsible with facts, and coarsening public discourse. Bloggers claim that they are the

“fifth estate,” monitoring journalists and raising standards by fact–checking mainstream news

reports. Rebecca Blood, author of the Weblog Handbook: Practical Advice on Creating and

Maintaining Your Blog (2002), notes that good journalism and good blogging are both

dependent on establishing trust.

• On the other hand, bloggers are significantly affecting journalism by demanding more

• Major news outlets are responding to demands for transparency by hiring public editors,

adding “how we got the story” links to their online articles, encouraging journalists to start

blogs to add more background to their reporting, and developing online features that

encourage citizen feedback. Former NBC anchor Brian Williams had a blog called “The

MEDIA LITERACY DISCUSSIONS AND EXERCISES

IN BRIEF: NEWSPAPER ANALYSIS

Bring a variety of newspapers to the classroom or examine newspaper Web sites and blogs on the

Web. Compare their coverage of a specific event, such as a presidential press conference. Is there

any bias in the way the sites and newspapers report the news?

IN BRIEF: QUESTIONABLE/ILLEGAL REPORTING PRACTICES

Make a short list of questionable or illegal methods that a reporter might use to get a story, like

concealing his or her identity. Discuss the circumstances under which these methods might be

justified.

IN DEPTH: THE SWEETER EXPERIENCE: PRINT VERSUS ONLINE NEWSPAPERS

(Note: A version of this activity is now available on LaunchPad for Media Essentials. See the

Media Literacy Practice Activity for this chapter.)

“

Pre–Exercise Question: Media critic Jon Katz wrote: “There’s almost no media experience

sweeter . . . than poring over a good newspaper. In the quiet morning, with a cup of coffee—so

1. Description. Look at the same day of the print and Web versions of a chosen newspaper.

Describe the content, style, organization, advertisements, and experience of reading both

types of newspapers.

Analysis. Is the Web version organized in a similar way, with the same section topics? Are

the stories the same, and are they edited in the same way? Does either version offer unique

elements that couldn’t be duplicated in the other format? Which version was more interesting

or easier to read? Is either version more information–based or more interpretive?

3. Interpretation. Does the Web version of the newspaper duplicate the print content and

reading experience (a practice called shovel–casting)? How does the medium (print versus

computer–based) affect the design, content, style, and reading experience of the newspaper?

IN DEPTH: EXAMINING EXPERT SOURCES

The purpose of this project is to extend your critical approach to the news. With a partner, choose

for reading and viewing two newspapers (a local daily paper and the New York Times) and one

TV outlet (a major network, Fox News, or a CNN newscast), all from the same weekday. Devise

a chart on which you list every expert source who is quoted in the stories for that particular day.

Column heads might include “News Event,” “Expert Source,” “Occupations,” “Gender,” “Age

(approximate),” and “Region.” Throughout this project, limit your focus to local, national, or

international news.

1. Description. Count the total number of expert sources used by each newspaper or network

program. Do the sources work in jobs that require professional degrees, or do they work in

blue–collar jobs? Look for quotes in news articles and for sound bites on television. Are all

3. Interpretation. Write a one– or two–paragraph critical interpretation of your findings. How are

the sources used? Why do you think certain sources appear in this day’s news more

frequently than others? Why do reporters seek out certain types of sources rather than others?

Does the gender of sources mean anything?

4. Evaluation. Discuss the limitations of your study. Compare how print and television handle

sources. Did circumstances on the particular day you chose suggest why one type of expert

appears more often than another type?

5. Engagement. Contact a print reporter, a TV reporter, or an editor responsible for your

CLASSROOM MEDIA RESOURCES

VIDEOS/DVDS/CDS

All the President’s Men (1976, 135 minutes). Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman play

Washington Post investigative reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, who uncovered

the Watergate scandal that led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon.

Beyond the Frame: Alternative Perspectives on the War on Terrorism (2004, 120 minutes).

Interviews with leading scholars, experts, and activists about the U.S. media’s coverage of the

war on terrorism. The interviews were (and continue to be) available free of charge via

The Black Press: Soldiers without Swords (1998, 86 minutes). The first film to chronicle the

Citizen Kane (1941, 119 minutes). The story of a publishing magnate based on the life of

newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst. Although critics excoriated this film in 1941,

it was eventually heralded as one of the century’s best films.

The Fifth Estate (2013, 128 minutes). The story of WikiLeaks and the power of the

whistleblower. Directed by Bill Condon.

Legacy of a Kidnapping (2000, 56 minutes). Lewis Lapham, editor of Harper’s, argues that

today’s tabloid journalism evolved from the Lindbergh kidnapping case. Media coverage of

The New Pamphleteers: Entrepreneurs, Watchdogs and Citizens in the Digital Age (2008, 78

minutes). An informal video view of the motivations, operations, and challenges faced by

Page One: Inside the New York Times. (2011, 92 minutes). Explore the New York Times

Spotlight (2015, 128 minutes). Film about the work of Boston Globe reporters to expose sexual

abuse in the Catholic Church and the subsequent cover–up of the scandal by the Archdiocese

of Boston.

Television Media: Headlines or Hype? (1998, 30 minutes). This program profiles the history of

the electronic media, revealing its biases and its tendencies toward sensationalism and

exploitation and highlighting the challenges it faces (part of The Media under Siege, a two–

Veronica Guerin (2003, 98 minutes). Starring Cate Blanchett, this feature film is based on the life

of a devoted Irish journalist who wrote about organized crime and was ultimately gunned

down in her car. The movie was directed by Joel Schumacher.

WEB SITES

An independent nonprofit organization committed to promoting freedom of the press

worldwide.

Journal covering all aspects of the newspaper industry.

A part of the American University School of Communications dedicated to using new

technologies in the newsroom.

“The Voice of the Black Community.”

Labor union of the newspaper industry.

Deals primarily with the production aspects of the newspaper industry.

Formed in 1992 by the merger of seven other newspaper associations, the NMA represents

more than 90 percent of the daily circulation in the United States.

A research organization specializing in the use of empirical methods to evaluate the

performance of the media.

The Web presence for the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Florida.

Investigative journalism in the public interest.

Journalists association. Local chapters organized throughout the country.

Global network of publishing companies and technology entrepreneurs.

Blogs:

Buzzmachine serves as the online home of Jeff Jarvis, a famed media critic who once worked

for TV Guide and Entertainment Weekly.

Liberal blog site founded by Markos Moulitsas Zuniga.

The Web site of law professor Glenn Reynolds, which has a particular focus on how the

worlds of technology and law intersect.

A blog run through Slate with a focus on politics, authored by journalist Mickey Kaus.

Rosen, a press critic and a strong supporter of citizen journalism, runs this site through New

York University, where he also works as a professor.

E-newsletter and blog tracking daily headlines.

Conservative political commentator and best–selling author Mark Steyn publishes his

thoughts on current events on his own Web site.

Founded during the Florida recount during the 2000 presidential election, Talking Points

Memo serves as a liberal political site, particularly focused on U.S. foreign and domestic

policy.