A Brief Look At the Record
By Andrew J. Manuse
"Congress shall make
no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise
thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or of the right of
the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress
of grievances."
First Amendment to the U.S.
Constitution (1791)
I thought the best place for a history of media bias to begin was with a relevant history of the media itself. Bear in mind that I might be wrong about “the best place” to start a media bias history and “a relevant history” is – of course – what I view to be a relevant history in a small amount of space. After this general history, I’ll venture in to a brief historical synopsis of media bias itself. The only way to fully examine the origin and development of media bias (which I cannot accomplished here) would be to read and analyze a vast collection of articles and books on the subject. I have provided links for some of these writings on this Web site so that readers with extensive interest in the subject could continue their research.
According to “The World
Book Multimedia Encyclopedia”: The first publications were probably posted
notices issued by the Roman government to its citizens. The first known example
of this was in 59 B.C., when the Acta Diurna, meaning Daily Events, reported
birth and death notices, as well as events from the Roman Senate. Other media
firsts include:
- A.D. 700 in China: The first printed newspaper, called Dibao or Ti-pao.
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Gutenberg's |
- 1436-1440 in Germany: Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press with replaceable wooden or metal letters.
- 1609 in Strasbourg Germany: The first regularly published newspaper in Europe, called Avisa Relation oder Zeitung.
- 1690 in Boston: The first American newspaper, called Publick Occurrences Both Forreign and Domestick, founded by Benjamin Harris. (The British government forced it to stop printing after issue number one.)
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The Boston News-Letter |
- 1704 in Boston: The first regularly published American newspaper, called the Boston News-Letter, founded by John Campbell.
- 1741: The first American magazine, called “American Magazine.” (It lasted only three months.)
- 1848 in New York City: The first major news “wire” service, called the Associated Press, founded by six New York City newspapers.
- 1920 in Pittsburgh: First radio journalism, on a station called KDKA. (The first broadcast was of the presidential election results.)
- 1947 on NBC: First television interview program, called “Meet the Press,” produced by Martha Rountree and Lawrence Spivak. (Nightly newscasts began in 1948, quickly developing on the big three; namely, CBS, NBC, ABC.)
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Early Bird 1 Satellite |
- 1965: The first commercial communications satellite was launched, called Early Bird, making intercontinental broadcasts possible.
- 1980: The first cable news network on television, called Cable News Network or CNN, founded by Ted Turner.
- Mid 1990s: The first Internet newsgroups, mostly posted by already major news organizations. (The Internet has made it easier for alternative news sources, like those listed on this Web site, to reach a larger group of people.)
As far as media bias is concerned, “The first accusation of press bias surely flew the day the first newspaper was published,” writes Jack Shafer in his three-part “Varieties of Media Bias” series published on MSN. The idea that the press is biased has come to a head in modern days (my Google search on the subject resulted in 720,000 sites). Both sides of the political spectrum – Liberals and Conservatives, Democrats and Republicans – have sites on media bias, and both sides blame the other side for the problem, citing incidences of Liberal or Conservative bias throughout history. In his article, Shafer writes that bias has probably always come from both sides in the news, though there were times when it was more Liberal and vise versa. The news probably evens itself out in the end, he adds.
Presidents have accused the press of being
biased, writes Shafer:
- Franklin D. Roosevelt called the press “2000 percent Republican.”
- Harry S. Truman “liked to say that publishers and editors were Republicans but that all their Washington reporters were Democrats.”
- Dwight D. Eisenhower denounced "sensation seeking columnists and commentators" at his nominating convention.
- John F. Kennedy didn’t comment himself, but “most influential papers happily drifted with the Kennedy liberal zeitgeist.”
- In 1964, presidential candidate Barry Goldwater began a “press-bashing” trend for Republicans, “with every [subsequent] GOP presidential candidate (with the possible exception of Gerald Ford) doing his best to bully reporters or at least neuter them.” The press were able to label him a “warmonger and hateful extremist.”
- Some members of the press corps didn't think there was anything wrong with giving political advice to Goldwater’s opponent Lyndon B. Johnson. The press reportedly told Johnson to campaign against Republicans in Bob Dole’s district when he asked them for advise.
- Richard Nixon had a “lifelong grudge against the press;” he believed the press had “mauled him” during his political years. His vice president, Spiro T. Agnew, called the press "nattering nabobs of negativism." Nixon promoted the idea that “the liberal press was out of touch with what he called ‘middle America.’”
Shafer also says that certain issues and events have involved different levels of bias.
- During the Red Scare, press liberals called government investigations of alleged communists “witch hunts,” while press conservatives defended the investigations.
- In the 1950s especially, the press pushed unions and social welfare, Liberal causes.
- In the 1960s, the press
“sympathized with the civil
rights struggle,” another Liberal cause. This period also involved “a generation
of working-class reporters [that] found themselves replaced by college graduates
schooled by a liberal elite.”
- In the 80s and beyond, Liberals developed their own organizations to detect bias in the press and adopted Nixon’s approach to attack individual “conservative reporters” they accused of being biased.
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"Yellow Kid" cartoons |
Here’s some of the historical “criticism of the press” offered by the “The World Book Multimedia Encyclopedia”:
- During the later part of the 1800s and the early 1900s, Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World and William Randolph Hearst’s New York Journal became strong rivals for readers, which led to “yellow journalism” or inaccurate, exaggerated, sensational reporting. “Critics have accused the press of often creating a false impression of an event by emphasizing its sensational aspects.”
- This same type of journalism has continued into recent times. It has largely surfaced in television news, “which emphasizes scandals, crimes, violence, and confrontations.” In addition, news is broadcast on cable television non-stop, and TV reporters have little time to verify facts, which sometimes results in false or misleading reports.
- During the 1990s, a number of news organizations were purchased by large corporations that also owned other unrelated businesses. These parent corporations expected news organizations to create a profit, even if it meant pulling stories that would offend advertisers. There have been times where advertisers actually shape the news.
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Now they gather around |
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People used to gather around the open fire
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If you are still interested in learning more about the origins and development of media bias, please see my “Related Web Sites” box, my “Related Articles” box and the other articles on this Web site. In addition, you could read the two books that I read in preparation for this project. They are: "Bias," by Bernard Goldberg and "What Liberal Media," by Eric Alterman.
