Thursday, Oct. 15, 2009

Old Media: ‘Not merely political motivation’

By Ken Robertson, Herald Executive Editor

Folks who think the new media’s attack blogs and partisanship are something new are either rather young or slept through — or never studied — media history.

In the early years of U.S. newspapering in the 1800s and well into the 1900s, papers often proudly bore the same name as the political parties they shilled for.

There were many newspapers with Republican or Democrat in their names, and quite a few still do, such as the Orangesburg, S.C., Times and Democrat and the Marion, Ill., Daily Republican.

There’s still at least one, the Quincy, Ill., Herald-Whig, that bears a 150-year defunct party’s name. The Whigs fell apart as a political party back in 1856, after thriving from the party’s founding in 1833 and sending both Henry Clay and Daniel Webster to Congress.

Newspapers were openly, unapologetically and even virulently partisan a century and more ago. Their political writers hobnobbed with and sometimes were political party functionaries.

The Los Angeles Times building was bombed in 1910 during a fight with local unions and 21 people were killed. Two union leaders eventually pleaded guilty to the bombing.

Even so, the founding fathers defended press freedom and crafted the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution to protect that right.

But by the time John F. Kennedy was elected in 1960, the press had taken on a different role, which it still tries to serve today. Newspapers and fledgling TV news organizations were trying to report the news fairly, accurately and without an openly partisan point of view.

“There is a terrific disadvantage not having the abrasive quality of the press applied to you daily, to an administration, even though we never like it, even though we wish they didn’t write it, and even though we disapprove, there isn’t any doubt that we could not do the job at all in a free society without a very, very active press,” Kennedy said in 1962.

He added, “It seems to me their obligation is to be as tough as they can on the administration but do it in a way which is directed towards getting as close to the truth as they can get and not merely because of some political motivation.”

Today’s blogosphere inhabitants probably would enlist unreservedly in the first part of Kennedy’s statement, but I suspect many would have trouble with the second half, which has been the aim of most of the nation’s newspapers for at least the last 50 to 60 years.

Viewed in that light, today’s attacks on the “old media” or the “mainstream media” are attacks on a journalism that has avowed fairness and accuracy as core values. Sometimes I wonder if that’s not the most liberal of the sins the average newspaper is guilty of.

Both may have been regrettably lacking at times, usually due to haste, sloth, incomplete knowledge and other problems, but seldom because of intended malice.

The new media lovers who reject that accuracy and fairness are the goal and who ridicule that concept are not really inventing something new. They’re returning to a time when truth and accuracy were subjugated to partisanship. They simply have found a “new” way to do it — online and often under the coward’s cover of anonymity.

In 10, 20 or perhaps 50 years, another generation will judge whether the “new” media was a wise political turn for U.S. democracy. Or whether it was merely the latest manifestation of George Santayana’s thought:

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

w Ken Robertson: 582-1520; krobertson@tricityherald.com

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