The Rise and Fall of the Media Establishment
by
Darrell M. West
Dept. of Political Science
Brown University
Providence, RI 02912
(401) 863-1163
To WWW.InsidePolitics.org,
for bringing the media revolution home to me personally
Table of Contents
Preface iii
1. Introduction 1
2. The Partisan Media 11
-Dueling Newspapers: Hamilton versus Jefferson
-The Alien and Sedition Laws
-The Jeffersonian Era
-The Jacksonian Revolution
-The Weakness of the Partisan Press
3. The Commercial Media 35
-The Impact of Technology on News Transmission
-The Rise of Independent Editors
-The Challenge of Slavery
-The Civil War
-Reconstruction
-The Emergence of Pulitzer and Hearst
-The Spanish-American War of 1898
-The Media and Nation Building at the Turn of the Century
4. The Objective Media 68
-The Rise of Objectivity
-The Progressive Movement
-World War II
-The Expansion of Mass Education Following the War
-The Evaluation of Scholars
-The Case of Vietnam
-The Watergate Scandal
-The Pinnacle of Source Credibility
5. The Interpretive Media 93
-The Shift to Interpretation
-The Rise of News Analysis
-Ad Watches
-Political Punditry
-The William Kennedy Smith Trial
-The Hill-Thomas Hearings
-Impact on Media Credibility
6. The Fragmented Media 116
-Fragmentation of the Media Marketplace
-The Role of Murdoch and Turner in Fragmenting the Media
-The Rise of the World Wide Web
-The Decline of Homogeneous News Coverage
-The O.J. Simpson Trials
-The Clinton Sex Scandals
-The Death of John F. Kennedy, Jr.
-Backlash Against the Media
7. The Future of the Media 151
-The Declining Power of the Media Establishment
-The Erosion of Media Professionalism
-Protection in Large Numbers
-Risks Facing the Fragmented Media
-Future Scenarios
-The Crucial Media Role in Democracy
Appendix 177
Notes 180
Preface
American journalists long have been considered a powerful force in the social, cultural,
and political life of our nation. With high public esteem, a professional style of coverage, and a
monopoly on newsgathering, reporters in this century were major gatekeepers who exercised
enormous clout over the framing of national events. But now, another era has dawned in which
new media have appeared, the television viewing audience has splintered, citizens have lost
confidence in the fairness and objectivity of reporters, coverage is more heterogeneous, and the
press is less able to direct the impressions of the general public. Indeed, the very entity popularly
known as "the media" seems strangely out of date amidst the proliferation of news and
entertainment outlets, and the varying degrees of professionalism within the industry.
In this book, I document the rise and fall of the American media establishment from 1789
to 2000. The early days of our country did not feature a very powerful media. The partisan
excesses of the first few decades of our country's existence and the commercial tabloidism that
followed weakened reporters and gave them very little public respect. With their tendency to
mimic the views of party leaders and write sensationalistic accounts of crime and vice, 19 th
century journalists simply did not have much credibility or independent power.
However, in the 20th century, through the gradual emergence of a professional press,
journalists rose as a political force and achieved unprecedented power over the dissemination of
the news. Due to changes in the way in which the media were organized, covered the news, and
seen by citizens, journalists became major powerbrokers. In the eyes of the general public, few
sectors of society held more respect and were seen as more fair and trustworthy than reporters.
Claiming only they could fairly report the news, professional journalists gained great credibility
and came to exercise considerable clout over the course of national events.
In the last decade, though, a new stage of media life has developed. With the emergence
of hundreds of new media outlets from cable television to talk radio to the Internet, the media
establishment has lost control over news reporting and a wide range of media outlets are in a cutthroat competition with one another. In this situation, news coverage is less homogenous and
professional, and more sensational and tabloid-oriented. Through these changes as well as a
decline in public respect for journalists, the power that we have associated with reporters has
eroded. The glory days of Edward R. Murrow, Walter Chronkite, and David Broder have given
way to Matt Drudge, Rush Limbaugh, and crude jokes by Jay Leno and David Letterman on latenight television.
These developments have profound consequences for our society, culture, and system of
government. With the loss of power by the mainstream press, elite journalists no longer are able
to dictate how the public responds to national events. The more heterogeneous coverage of the
current era has weakened the shared cultural understandings that knit Americans together.
Niche-market narrowcasting is in and mass broadcasting is out. The electronic Balkanization
which has ensued means citizens are divided by gender, race, lifestyle, and geography in how
they see current events. The result is a media system that pleases virtually no one.
In discussing how we reached this state of affairs, I review why the media establishment
gained and lost influence over the past two centuries, how these shifts in media power and
organization occurred, what the consequences were for public life, and what challenges lay ahead
for the industry. Using a historical approach based on two dozen comparative case studies from
the founders to current period, I reveal how reporters in different periods covered events of the
day and what it meant for the formation of the American state. I conclude the book by noting
how the fragmentation of the current media system ironically protects us from many of the
problems that worry contemporary observers, such as corporate control over the news and biased,
superficial, and unfair coverage. Even though there has been a clear loss of professionalism in
the industry as a whole, the excesses of individual outlets are balanced by the dramatic increase
in the diversity of outlets, the heterogeneity of coverage, and the declining power and audience
share of specific channels. As de Tocqueville concluded of the early American press, there is
protection in large numbers in the overall media system.
During the course of this book, I had help from a number of different people. Alex
Slawsby performed yeoman service as research assistant. He proved quite expert at locating a
range of relevant citations and obscure facts for me. Alex also provided a number of helpful
suggestions on the general outline of the book.
Although he didn’t realize it at the time, Byron Shafer of Nuffield College at Oxford
University gave the impetus for this book project by inviting me to co-teach a seminar there
during a 1993 sabbatical. One of the lectures I delivered at Oxford outlined the framework for
what later became this book.
Over the past few years, students in my Campaigns and Elections, and Politics and Mass
Media courses at Brown University have aided this project by asking compelling questions
during discussions of this research project. The overall enthusiasm of these students helped
convince me that a book on this subject needed to be written.
James Headley, editor at Bedford/St. Martin's Press, deserves a thank you for seeing the
potential of this book. His successor, Katherine Kurzman, provided detailed comments which
made this a better book. The external reviewers made a number of helpful suggestions on how to
strengthen the argument of the book. I am especially grateful to John Zaller and David Jones for
their keen insights.
Finally, I appreciate the help provided by WWW.InsidePolitics.org, the Department of
Political Science, the John Hazen White, Sr. Public Opinion Laboratory, the A. Alfred Taubman
Center for Public Policy and American Institutions, and the Undergraduate Research and
Teaching Assistantship program at Brown University. I could not have completed this book
without the support of these units.