The Press Takes a Vacation

The American press is taking a long and tortuous vacation from its evolved role in U.S. society and public life. Some might even say it has reverted to its original state in the colonial, revolutionary, and 19th century periods, when it had little or no standards of fairness, transparency, and accuracy.

The 20th century saw a rapid rise in press standards, so that in the post-World War II era, the press had acquired a certain standing with the general public, and editors set higher and higher professional journalistic requirements.

But as television news and later the internet began to dominate the press — now referred to as the media — the quality of news coverage rapidly declined to the state in which it exists now.

In the past, the press was primarily the nation’s newspapers, most of which took the side of one of the major political parties of their era. Non-political reporting also lacked much objectivity, with war and domestic disaster news often based on rumor, conjecture, and even deliberate deception.

A 19th century headline, for example, would sometimes have the sub-headline “Interesting if True!” Today, many editors and journalists seem to have adapted this to “Interesting if False!”

The press has always and naturally had an adversarial role in public life. It also had much to do with stirring up colonial America to sympathize with the Revolution, and likewise stirred abolitionist sentiment that culminated in the Civil War.

One press magnate is said to have singlehandedly, through his chain of newspapers, provoked U.S. action in the Spanish-American War. Prior to the U.S. entry into World War I, press coverage helped turn public opinion against the Central Powers in Europe, and it was the press that assisted the abrupt turn of general anti-war U.S. sentiment prior to Pearl Harbor.

The media also supported public revulsion to the war in Vietnam. Today, the American media has had much to do with the widespread sympathetic attitude toward Ukraine in its war with Russia.

As the Republic matured and discarded slavery, segregation, child labor, and advanced women’s suffrage and civil rights, journalism also matured as fair and transparent. Accurate reporting became more and more standard — and was rewarded by the public.

In the 1970s, the Watergate scandal became the apotheosis of the intensified adversarial and investigative role of the media. Its success in bringing about the resignation of a U.S. president was followed by a self-intoxication of many reporters, in which their private opinions and biases were believed to be above the rules of fairness and accuracy.

This was, of course, a reversion to press attitudes in the past, when the institution was perceived as an instrument of subjective ideologies and attitudes and played a role in domestic politics and foreign wars.

The current reversion to journalism’s early behavior is not monolithic. The once-honored press giants of the recent past, including the New York Times, Washington Post and most news agencies and large TV networks, have become propaganda outlets for the progressive, woke, and radical left agenda in the U.S.

This has led to public regard for the media, as measured by every public opinion poll, to be extremely and historically low. Conservative newspapers also exist in a few large cities, (e.g. New York Post, Washington Examiner, Washington Times, Boston Herald, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, and Richmond News-Leader) but represent a tiny minority of U.S. daily newspapers.

However, probably the most respected newspaper overall in the in the U.S. is the conservative Wall Street Journal.

Magazines, like newspapers, have long been associated with political attitudes, and continue to be so today. However, several very liberal and very conservative major magazine publications have recently closed down, or are surviving as profitless pastimes of wealthy owners. Today, numerous politically oriented magazines, in print and online, ranging from left to right, are published.

Most Americans now receive news through a variety of venues, but are increasingly turning to the internet as their primary source of information. This includes once print-only newspapers and magazines, which have instituted subscription-based online editions.

Radio and the internet have also created a platform for opinion journalists, pundits, and other political commentators. The late conservative Rush Limbaugh became the most widely heard commentator through his regular radio and TV shows, and his successor appears to be Tucker Carlson, who has left Fox News for his own show on Twitter. Liberal-progressive and other conservative personalities are heard or seen by millions of Americans every day.

Opinion journalism, of course, is understood to be partisan, but classic reporting journalism had been held to a different standard. The criticism of the latter, including editors and reporters, is that they have confused the front page to be the editorial page. This is the historic and controversial turn of journalism today, and the source of its “vacation” from its maturity and evolution as a communication institution covering public affairs.

Leading this trend, progressive and radical leftism has spawned wokeism, cancel culture, and political correctness as tools for the kind of journalism which the general public increasingly and overwhelmingly rejects.