A History of Journalism: Objectives
A History of Journalism: Objectives
A History of Journalism: Objectives
Objectives
After reading this section, you will be able to:
· Discuss the interplay between technologies and the development of journalism.
· Discuss methods used to pay for the collection and dissemination of news.
Humans hunger for news. We want knowledge beyond what we can gather using our own
senses. We want narratives, facts, events, people, back stories and the ideas from beyond our
doors. We want to understand, and we want to escape our isolation. The mass media tries to
satisfy this hunger.
The work journalists produce is part of mass media. Mass media’s job is to inform, persuade,
entertain and transmit cultural values. Journalism openly and proudly does the first three—it
persuades, informs and entertains—and often, despite its efforts to be objective, it reflects and
transmits cultural values. Sometimes these roles of mass media conflict with each other.
“The Odyssey,” one of the oldest works in Western literature, is full of the hunger for news.
Twenty years after Odysseus sails for Troy, his wife and son long for news of him. But in Greece in
800 BCE, there are only two ways of getting news. You can stay at home and hope a traveler comes to
you with accurate reports, or you can travel forth to interview primary sources for yourself. Literacy
had not yet reached Greece.
The story of Odysseus represents the four sometimes competition functions of mass
communication: to inform, persuade, entertain and transmit culture. Penelope and Telemachus,
Odysseus’s wife and son, wanted accurate information about Odysseus’s whereabouts. Penelope
guarded herself against gossip and those who would exploit her. She asks the old beggar who claims
to have seen Odysseus (but is really her returning husband in disguise) to support his reports with
relevant details. She demands the beggar tell her “how he looked, the quality of his clothing and
some particular of his company.” Eyewitness reporting gains credibility from accurate detail, and
Penelope wanted only the truth.
But before returning home disguised as an old beggar, Odysseus had earlier been washed
ashore alone in Phaicia, where King Alcinous and his people want entertainment more than facts,
entertainment in harmony with their world view. Odysseus wants a ship to return home to Ithaca, so
he gives them the entertainment they want.
When the king introduces himself he says, “Cyclops ranked no nearer gods than we.”
Odysseus reads his audience well and crafts his account to please them. He gives them a good
story, complete with a Cyclops, seductive enchantresses, a journey to the afterlife, a six-headed
monster, cannibals, lotus flowers, a whirlpool and vengeful gods. He portrays himself as the
complete Greek hero, embodying Greek cultural values. He is resourceful, loyal, brave, boastful,
curious and an associate of the gods. His great ability as an entertainer—and a persuader—earn
him safe passage home to Ithaca.
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1775 to 1784, Pennsylvania Evening Post becomes It is bad business to lose the trust of
Pennsylvania the first daily paper in America in 1783. your audience. The paper may have
Originally a tri-weekly Patriot paper, it died because it seemed self-serving
switched to the British side when the and disloyal—a turncoat paper.
city was occupied, then welcomed
back the Patriots when the British were
expelled. During the British invasion,
the other papers were forced out
of business, and the Evening Post
emerged as the town’s only paper.
The paper was published as a daily
for just 17 months before it went out of
business.
December 15, 1791 The First Amendment becomes Some say the First Amendment is
part of the Constitution in the Bill too radical to be passed today, but it
of Rights. The First Amendment enshrined in law the citizen’s (and by
prohibited the federal government inference, the press’s) right to criticize
from doing what the British colonial the government. This right provided the
governments had done—suppressing new nation with the flexibility to grow
freedom, including freedom of the and change for almost two and half
press and freedom of speech. The centuries without the need for further
Founding Fathers, having lived through revolution.
British tyranny, knew the importance Thomas Jefferson wrote, “Were it
of free speech and a free press to were left to me to decide whether we
creating and preserving democracy. should have a government without
newspapers or newspapers without a
government, I should not hesitate to
prefer the latter.”
Of course the printed newspaper
was the only journalism in 1800, so
newspapers stood for journalism in its
many modern forms.
By 1800, just nine years after the First
Amendment became law, there were
approximately 200 newspapers in the
new nation. In 1775, there had been
about 35.
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