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Saturday, December 3, 2022

History of journalism

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The history of journalism spans the growth of technology and trade, marked by the advent of specialized techniques for gathering and disseminating information on a regular basis that has caused, as one history of journalism surmises, the steady increase of "the scope of news available to us and the speed with which it is transmitted. Before the printing press was invented, word of mouth was the primary source of news. Returning merchants, sailors, travellers brought news back to the mainland, and this was then picked up by pedlars and travelling players and spread from town to town. Ancient scribes often wrote this information down. This transmission of news was highly unreliable and died out with the invention of the printing press. Newspapers (and to a lesser extent, magazines) have always been the primary medium of journalists since the 18th century, radio and television in the 20th century, and the Internet in the 21st century.

Early and basic journalism

Europe

In 1556, the government of Venice first published the monthly Notizie scritte ("Written notices") which cost one gazzetta, a Venetian coin of the time, the name of which eventually came to mean "newspaper". These avvisi were handwritten newsletters and used to convey political, military, and economic news quickly and efficiently throughout Europe, more specifically Italy, during the early modern era (1500–1800)—sharing some characteristics of newspapers, though usually not considered true newspapers.

However, none of these publications fully met the modern criteria for proper newspapers, as they were typically not intended for the general public and restricted to a certain range of topics. Early publications played into the development of what would today be recognized as the newspaper, which came about around 1601. Around the 15th and 16th centuries, in England and France, long news accounts called "relations" were published; in Spain, they were called "Relaciones". Single event news publications were printed in the broadsheet format, which was often posted. These publications also appeared as pamphlets and small booklets (for longer narratives, often written in a letter format), often containing woodcut illustrations. Literacy rates were low in comparison to today, and these news publications were often read aloud (literacy and oral culture were, in a sense, existing side by side in this scenario).

Title page of Carolus' Relation from 1609, the earliest newspaper

By 1400, businessmen in Italian and German cities were compiling handwritten chronicles of important news events, and circulating them to their business connections. The idea of using a printing press for this material first appeared in Germany around 1600. Early precursors were the so-called Messrelationen ("trade fair reports") which were semi-annual news compilations for the large book fairs at Frankfurt and Leipzig, starting in the 1580s. The first true newspaper was the weekly Relation aller Fuernemmen und gedenckwürdigen Historien ("Collection of all distinguished and memorable news"), started in Strasbourg in 1605. The Avisa Relation oder Zeitung was published in Wolfenbüttel from 1609, and gazettes soon were established in Frankfurt (1615), Berlin (1617) and Hamburg (1618). By 1650, 30 German cities had active gazettes. A semi-yearly news chronicle, in Latin, the Mercurius Gallobelgicus, was published at Cologne between 1594 and 1635, but it was not the model for other publications.

The news circulated between newsletters through well-established channels in 17th century Europe. Antwerp was the hub of two networks, one linking France, Britain, Germany, and the Netherlands; the other linking Italy, Spain and Portugal. Favorite topics included wars, military affairs, diplomacy, and court business and gossip.

After 1600 the national governments in France and England began printing official newsletters. In 1622 the first English-language weekly magazine, "A current of General News" was published and distributed in England in an 8- to 24-page quarto format.

Revolutionary changes in the 19th century

Newspapers in all major countries became much more important in the 19th century because of a series of technical, business, political, and cultural changes. High-speed presses and cheap wood-based newsprint made large circulations possible. The rapid expansion of elementary education meant a vast increase in the number of potential readers. Political parties sponsored newspapers at the local and national levels. Toward the end of the century, advertising became well-established and became the main source of revenue for newspaper owners. This led to a race to obtain the largest possible circulation, often followed by downplaying partisanship so that members of all parties would buy a paper. The number of newspapers in Europe in the 1860s and 1870s was steady at about 6,000; then it doubled to 12,000 in 1900. In the 1860s and 1870s, most newspapers were four pages of editorials, reprinted speeches, excerpts from novels and poetry and a few small local ads. They were expensive, and most readers went to a café to look over the latest issue. There were major national papers in each capital city, such as the London Times, the London Post, the Paris Temps and so on. They were expensive and directed to the National political elite. Every decade the presses became faster, and the invention of automatic typesetting in the 1880s made feasible the overnight printing of a large morning newspaper. Cheap wood pulp replaced the much more expensive rag paper. A major cultural innovation was the professionalization of news gathering, handled by specialist reporters. Liberalism led to freedom of the press, and ended newspaper taxes, along with a sharp reduction to government censorship. Entrepreneurs interested in profit increasingly replaced politicians interested in shaping party positions, so there was dramatic outreach to a larger subscription base. The price fell to a penny. In New York, "Yellow Journalism" used sensationalism, comics (they were colored yellow), a strong emphasis on team sports, reduced coverage of political details and speeches, a new emphasis on crime, and a vastly expanded advertising section featuring especially major department stores. Women had previously been ignored, but now they were given multiple advice columns on family and household and fashion issues, and the advertising was increasingly pitched to them.

Italy

Early developments

Before the development of the first regularly issued printed newspapers in the mid-17th century, from about 1500 to 1700, hand-written newsletters, known by various names such as avvisi, reporti, gazzette, ragguagli, were the fastest and most efficient means by which military and political news could be circulated in Italy.

Avviso from Rome dated 4 Dec 1700

Used to convey political, military and economic news quickly, hand-written avvisi spread through Italy, generated by the desire of each court to know the activities of opposing and even allied courts. Over time, this information that had been provided for free eventually was sold by specialists and distributed by couriers in order to meet the high demand for such a product. From the middle of the 16th century Italian newsletter writers, called menanti, reportisti, or gazzettieri, set up news services, the regularity of which may have been dictated by the postal service network in their region.

The avvisi found their origins, and peaked, in early modern Rome and Venice. It is not difficult to understand why these two cities, in particular, should have played a central role in the development of a 'news service'. The words of Vittorio Siri, explaining his reasons for choosing the place where he would work as a contemporary historian, offer one explanation. He says he needed 'a city like that which Plutarch sought for a historian, that is, where there was a great and powerful court, full of ambassadors and minsters', where 'more than in any other city in the world one could see a multitude of personages and soldiers who had been ambassadors at all the courts of Europe and where civil questions were managed by nobles, where people practiced who possessed refined judicial abilities and were knowledgeable about the affairs of princes. Siri was referring to Venice, but Rome, the capital of the Catholic Church, was no different. Indeed, only a few years earlier Maiolino Bisaccioni, one of the many adventurous historian-gazetteers of the period, had declared 'Rome, as you know [is] the place where all the news in the world is found.

The content and character of the avvisi differed between the two cities. Roman avvisi contained ecclesiastical, political, and criminal intrigue, taking advantage of opposing factions willing to divulge state secrets or official gossip for their own benefit. These were then read by church and government officials as well as the nobility. Such was the partisan (and sometimes scandalous) comments on public affairs that they became censored by the Pope and several copyists were imprisoned or executed. The celebrated Roman jurist Prospero Farinacci argued that the revelation of state secrets by the writers of newsletters was a crime that had to be punished no less seriously than the crimen laesae maiestatis. Venetian avvisi were more conservative in their coverage of such events and more preoccupied with commercial matters.

17th century

Title page of the third volume of Vittorio Siri's Il Mercurio (1652), etched by Stefano della Bella

Printed avvisi did not appear in Italy until the first half of the seventeenth century. Possible reasons for this were easier avoidance of censorship in hand-written form, reluctance of copyists to use printing technology (which they viewed as a threat to their job security), and clients desiring the status offered by hand-written information as opposed to the "vulgar" print.

By the late 1630s manuscript news-sheets diminished in importance because of their limited circulation and high costs. Scholars suppose that the first newspaper printed in Italy was edited in Florence in 1636 by Amador Massi and Lorenzo Landi, but no issue was discovered to confirm that conjecture, therefore the newspaper Genova, printed from 1639, shall be considered the oldest printed newspaper in Italy. By the mid-seventeenth century irregularly printed news-sheets had become routine in many Italian cities. The Gazzetta di Mantova, the world's oldest newspaper still existing and published with the same name, was established in June 1664.

In 1668 the first Italian scientific journal was published, the Giornale de' Letterati, following the Journal des sçavans and the Philosophical Transactions in style. The Giornale de' Letterati had little political significance, but played an important role in disseminating the results of research and cultural work done outside Italy and in spreading news on Italian culture throughout Europe.

France

1632 to 1815

The first newspaper in France, the Gazette de France, was established in 1632 by the king's physician Theophrastus Renaudot (1586–1653), with the patronage of Louis XIII. All newspapers were subject to prepublication censorship, and served as instruments of propaganda for the monarchy.

La Gazette, 26 December 1786

Under the ancien regime, the most prominent magazines were Mercure de France, Journal des sçavans, founded in 1665 for scientists, and Gazette de France, founded in 1631. Jean Loret was one of France's first journalists. He disseminated the weekly news of music, dance and Parisian society from 1650 until 1665 in verse, in what he called a gazette burlesque, assembled in three volumes of La Muse Historique (1650, 1660, 1665). The French press lagged a generation behind the British, for they catered to the needs the aristocracy, while the newer British counterparts were oriented toward the middle and working classes.

Periodicals were censored by the central government in Paris. They were not totally quiescent politically—often they criticized Church abuses and bureaucratic ineptitude. They supported the monarchy and they played at most a small role in stimulating the revolution. During the Revolution new periodicals played central roles as propaganda organs for various factions. Jean-Paul Marat (1743–1793) was the most prominent editor. His L'Ami du peuple advocated vigorously for the rights of the lower classes against the enemies of the people Marat hated; it closed when he was assassinated. After 1800 Napoleon reimposed strict censorship.

1815 to 1914

Magazines flourished after Napoleon left in 1815. Most were based in Paris and most emphasized literature, poetry and stories. They served religious, cultural and political communities. In times of political crisis they expressed and helped shape the views of their readership and thereby were major elements in the changing political culture. For example, there were eight Catholic periodicals in 1830 in Paris. None were officially owned or sponsored by the Church and they reflected a range of opinions among educated Catholics about current issues, such as the 1830 July Revolution that overthrew the Bourbon monarchy. Several were strong supporters of the Bourbon kings, but all eight ultimately urged support for the new government, putting their appeals in terms of preserving civil order. They often discussed the relationship between church and state. Generally, they urged priests to focus on spiritual matters and not engage in politics. Historian M. Patricia Dougherty says this process created a distance between the Church and the new monarch and enabled Catholics to develop a new understanding of church-state relationships and the source of political authority.

20th century

The press was handicapped during the war by shortages of newsprint and young journalists, and by an abundance of censorship designed to maintain home front morale by minimizing bad war news. The Parisian newspapers were largely stagnant after the war; circulation inched up to 6 million a day from 5 million in 1910. The major postwar success story was Paris Soir; which lacked any political agenda and was dedicated to providing a mix of sensational reporting to aid circulation, and serious articles to build prestige. By 1939, its circulation was over 1.7 million, double that of its nearest rival the tabloid Le Petit Parisien. In addition to its daily paper Paris Soir sponsored a highly successful women's magazine Marie-Claire. Another magazine Match was modelled after the photojournalism of the American magazine Life. 

John Gunther wrote in 1940 that of the more than 100 daily newspapers in Paris, two (L'Humanité and Action Française's publication) were honest; "Most of the others, from top to bottom, have news columns for sale". He reported that Bec et Ongles was simultaneously subsidized by the French government, German government, and Alexandre Stavisky, and that Italy allegedly paid 65 million francs to French newspapers in 1935. France was a democratic society in the 1930s, but the people were kept in the dark about critical issues of foreign policy. The government tightly controlled all of the media to promulgate propaganda to support the government's foreign policy of appeasement to the aggressions of Italy and especially Nazi Germany. There were 253 daily newspapers, all owned separately. The five major national papers based in Paris were all under the control of special interests, especially right-wing political and business interests that supported appeasement. They were all venal, taking large secret subsidies to promote the policies of various special interests. Many leading journalists were secretly on the government payroll. The regional and local newspapers were heavily dependent on government advertising and published news and editorials to suit Paris. Most of the international news was distributed through the Havas agency, which was largely controlled by the government.

Britain

16th century

By the end of the sixteenth century the word gazzetta began to spread from Italy to England. The definition given to the term by John Florio in his Italian-English dictionary A Worlde of Wordes of 1598 is significant; under the Italian entry for the plural form gazzette there is a precise definition: “the daily newse or intelligence written from Italie, namely from Rome and Venice, tales running newes.” Florio records another two connected terms: the verb gazzettare meaning “to write or report daily occurencees one to another, to tell flying tales” and the profession of gazzettiere defined as “an intelligencer or such as have daily occurrences.” Towards the end of the sixteenth century the Italian term gazzetta became popular. Francis Bacon in his own correspondence uses the Italian term gazzetta rather than a matching English term or the anglicised word “gazette.” In the same time the term reporto, widely used in Venice with the same meaning, was carried to England as the word report. Consequently reportista (reporter) became synonymous with a compiler of newsletters or gazettes.

17th century

The London Gazette, dated 14–17 May 1705 detailing the return of John Leake from Gibraltar after the Battle of Cabrita Point

On 7 November 1665, The London Gazette (at first called The Oxford Gazette) began publication. It was published twice a week. Other English papers started to publish three times a week, and later the first daily papers emerged. Publication was controlled under the Licensing Act of 1662, but the Act's lapses from 1679 to 1685 and from 1695 onwards encouraged a number of new titles.

Mercurius Caledonius founded in Edinburgh in 1660, was Scotland's first but short-lived newspaper. Only 12 editions were published during 1660 and 1661.

Early British newspapers typically included short articles, ephemeral topics, some illustrations and service articles (classifieds). They were often written by multiple authors, although the authors' identities were often obscured. They began to contain some advertisements, and they did not yet include sections.

20th century

By 1900 popular journalism in Britain aimed at the largest possible audience, including the working class, had proven a success and made its profits through advertising. Alfred Harmsworth, 1st Viscount Northcliffe (1865–1922), "More than anyone... shaped the modern press. Developments he introduced or harnessed remain central: broad contents, exploitation of advertising revenue to subsidize prices, aggressive marketing, subordinate regional markets, independence from party control. His Daily Mail held the world record for daily circulation until his death. Prime Minister Lord Salisbury quipped it was "written by office boys for office boys".

Socialist and labour newspapers also proliferated and in 1912 the Daily Herald was launched as the first daily newspaper of the trade union and labour movement.

Newspapers reached their peak of importance during the First World War, in part because wartime issues were so urgent and newsworthy, while members of Parliament were constrained by the all-party coalition government from attacking the government. By 1914 Northcliffe controlled 40 percent of the morning newspaper circulation in Britain, 45 percent of the evening and 15 percent of the Sunday circulation. He eagerly tried to turn it into political power, especially in attacking the government in the Shell Crisis of 1915. Lord Beaverbrook said he was, "the greatest figure who ever strode down Fleet Street." A.J.P. Taylor, however, says, "Northcliffe could destroy when he used the news properly. He could not step into the vacant place. He aspired to power instead of influence, and as a result, forfeited both."

Other powerful editors included C. P. Scott of the Manchester Guardian, James Louis Garvin of The Observer and Henry William Massingham of the highly influential weekly magazine of opinion, The Nation.

Germany

Denmark

Danish news media first appeared in the 1540s, when handwritten fly sheets reported on the news. In 1666, Anders Bording, the father of Danish journalism, began a state paper. The royal privilege to bring out a newspaper was issued to Joachim Wielandt in 1720. University officials handled the censorship, but in 1770 Denmark became one of the first nations of the world to provide for press freedom; it ended in 1799. The press in 1795–1814, led by intellectuals and civil servants, called out for a more just and modern society, and spoke out for the oppressed tenant farmers against the power of the old aristocracy.

In 1834, the first liberal newspaper appeared one that gave much more emphasis to actual news content rather than opinions. The newspapers championed the Revolution of 1848 in Denmark. The new constitution of 1849 liberated the Danish press. Newspapers flourished in the second half of the 19th century, usually tied to one or another political party or labor union. Modernization, bringing in new features and mechanical techniques, appeared after 1900. The total circulation was 500,000 daily in 1901, more than doubling to 1.2 million in 1925. The German occupation brought informal censorship; some offending newspaper buildings were simply blown up by the Nazis. During the war, the underground produced 550 newspapers—small, surreptitiously printed sheets that encouraged sabotage and resistance.

The appearance of a dozen editorial cartoons ridiculing Mohammed set off Muslim outrage and violent threats around the world. (see: Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy) The Muslim community decided the caricatures in the Copenhagen newspaper Jyllands-Posten in September 2005 represented another instance of Western animosity toward Islam and were so sacrilegious that the perpetrators deserved severe punishment.

The historiography of the Danish press is rich with scholarly studies. Historians have made insights into Danish political, social and cultural history, finding that individual newspapers are valid analytical entities, which can be studied in terms of source, content, audience, media, and effect.

Russia

United States

Asia

China

Journalism in China before 1910 primarily served the international community. The main national newspapers in Chinese were published by Protestant missionary societies in order to reach the literate. Hard news was not their specialty, but they did train the first generation of Chinese journalists in Western standards of newsgathering. editorials, and advertising. Demands for reform and revolution were impossible for papers based inside China. Instead, such demands appeared in polemical papers based in Japan, for example, those edited by Liang Qichao (1873–1929).

The overthrow of the old imperial regime in 1911 produced a surge in Chinese nationalism, an end to censorship, and a demand for professional, nationwide journalism. All the major cities launched such efforts. Special attention was paid to China's role in World War I. to the disappointing Paris Peace Conference of 1919, and to the aggressive demands and actions of Japan against Chinese interests. Journalists created professional organizations and aspired to separate news from commentary. At the Press Congress of the World conference in Honolulu in 1921, the Chinese delegates were among the most Westernized and self-consciously professional journalists from the developing world. By the late 1920s, however, there was a much greater emphasis on advertising and expanding circulation, and much less interest in the sort of advocacy journalism that had inspired the revolutionaries.

India

The first newspaper in India was circulated in 1780 under the editorship of James Augustus Hicky, named Bengal Gazette. On May 30, 1826 Udant Martand (The Rising Sun), the first Hindi-language newspaper published in India, started from Calcutta (now Kolkata), published every Tuesday by Pt. Jugal Kishore Shukla. Maulawi Muhammad Baqir in 1836 founded the first Urdu-language newspaper the Delhi Urdu Akhbar. India's press in the 1840s was a motley collection of small-circulation daily or weekly sheets printed on rickety presses. Few extended beyond their small communities and seldom tried to unite the many castes, tribes, and regional subcultures of India. The Anglo-Indian papers promoted purely British interests. Englishman Robert Knight (1825–1890) founded two important English-language newspapers that reached a broad Indian audience, The Times of India and The Statesman. They promoted nationalism in India, as Knight introduced the people to the power of the press and made them familiar with political issues and the political process.

Latin America and the Caribbean

British influence extended globally through its colonies and its informal business relationships with merchants in major cities. They needed up-to-date market and political information. The Diário de Pernambuco was founded in Recife, Brazil, in 1825. El Mercurio was founded in Valparaiso, Chile, in 1827. The most influential newspaper in Peru, El Comercio, first appeared in 1839. The Jornal do Commercio was established in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 1827. Much later Argentina founded its newspapers in Buenos Aires: La Prensa in 1869 and La Nacion in 1870.

In Jamaica, there were a number of newspapers that represented the views of the white planters who owned slaves. These newspapers included titles such as the Royal Gazette, The Diary and Kingston Daily Advertiser, Cornwall Chronicle, Cornwall Gazette, and Jamaica Courant. In 1826, two free coloureds, Edward Jordan and Robert Osborn founded The Watchman, which openly campaigned for the rights of free coloureds, and became Jamaica's first anti-slavery newspaper. In 1830, the criticism of the slave-owning hierarchy was too much, and the Jamaican colonial authorities arrested Jordan, the editor, and charged him with constructive treason. However, Jordan was eventually acquitted, and he eventually became Mayor of Kingston in post-Emancipation Jamaica.

On the abolition of slavery in the 1830s, Gleaner Company was founded by two Jamaican Jewish brothers, Joshua and Jacob De Cordova, budding businessmen who represented the new class of light-skinned Jamaicans taking over post-Emancipation Jamaica. While the Gleaner represented the new establishment for the next century, there was a growing black, nationalist movement that campaigned for increased political representation and rights in the early twentieth century. To this end, Osmond Theodore Fairclough founded Public Opinion in 1937. O.T. Fairclough was supported by radical journalists Frank Hill and H.P. Jacobs, and the first edition of this new newspaper tried to galvanize public opinion around a new nationalism. Strongly aligned to the People's National Party (PNP), Public Opinion counted among its journalists progressive figures such as Roger Mais, Una Marson, Amy Bailey, Louis Marriott, Peter Abrahams, and future prime minister Michael Manley, among others.

While Public Opinion campaigned for self-government, British prime minister Winston Churchill made it known he had no intention of presiding "over the liquidation of the British Empire", and consequently the Jamaican nationalists in the PNP were disappointed with the watered-down constitution that was handed down to Jamaica in 1944. Mais wrote an article saying "Now we know why the draft of the new constitution has not been published before," because the underlings of Churchill were "all over the British Empire implementing the real imperial policy implicit in the statement by the Prime Minister". The British colonial police raided the offices of Public Opinion, seized Mais's manuscript, arrested Mais himself, and convicted him of seditious libel, jailing him for six months.

Radio and television

The history of radio broadcasting begins in the 1920s and reached its apogee in the 1930s and 1940s. Experimental television was being studied before the 2nd world war, became operational in the late 1940s, and became widespread in the 1950s and 1960s, largely but not entirely displacing radio.

Internet journalism

The rapidly growing impact of the Internet, especially after 2000, brought "free" news and classified advertising to audiences that no longer cared for paid subscriptions. The Internet undercut the business model of many daily newspapers. Bankruptcy loomed across the U.S. and did hit such major papers as the Rocky Mountain news (Denver), the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times, among many others. Chapman and Nuttall find that proposed solutions, such as multiplatforms, paywalls, PR-dominated news gathering, and shrinking staffs have not resolved the challenge. The result, they argue, is that journalism today is characterized by four themes: personalization, globalization, localization, and pauperization.

Historiography

Journalism historian David Nord has argued that in the 1960s and 1970s:

"In journalism history and media history, a new generation of scholars . . . criticised traditional histories of the media for being too insular, too decontextualized, too uncritical, too captive to the needs of professional training, and too enamoured of the biographies of men and media organizations."

In 1974, James W. Carey identified the 'Problem of Journalism History'. The field was dominated by a Whig interpretation of journalism history.

"This views journalism history as the slow, steady expansion of freedom and knowledge from the political press to the commercial press, the setbacks into sensationalism and yellow journalism, the forward thrust into muck raking and social responsibility....the entire story is framed by those large impersonal forces buffeting the press: industrialization, urbanization and mass democracy.

O'Malley says the criticism went too far because there was much of value in the deep scholarship of the earlier period.

Journalism

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Journalism is the production and distribution of reports on the interaction of events, facts, ideas, and people that are the "news of the day" and that informs society to at least some degree. The word, a noun, applies to the occupation (professional or not), the methods of gathering information, and the organizing literary styles. Journalistic media include print, television, radio, Internet, and, in the past, newsreels.

The appropriate role for journalism varies from countries to country, as do perceptions of the profession, and the resulting status. In some nations, the news media are controlled by government and are not independent. In others, news media are independent of the government and operate as private industry. In addition, countries may have differing implementations of laws handling the freedom of speech, freedom of the press as well as slander and libel cases.

The proliferation of the Internet and smartphones has brought significant changes to the media landscape since the turn of the 21st century. This has created a shift in the consumption of print media channels, as people increasingly consume news through e-readers, smartphones, and other personal electronic devices, as opposed to the more traditional formats of newspapers, magazines, or television news channels. News organizations are challenged to fully monetize their digital wing, as well as improvise on the context in which they publish in print. Newspapers have seen print revenues sink at a faster pace than the rate of growth for digital revenues.

Production

Journalistic conventions vary by country. In the United States, journalism is produced by media organizations or by individuals. Bloggers are often regarded as journalists. The Federal Trade Commission requires that bloggers who write about products received as promotional gifts, disclose that they received the products for free. This is intended to eliminate conflicts of interest and protect consumers.

In the US, many credible news organizations are incorporated entities, have an editorial board, and exhibit separate editorial and advertising departments. Many credible news organizations, or their employees, often belong to and abide by the ethics of professional organizations such as the American Society of News Editors, the Society of Professional Journalists, Investigative Reporters & Editors, Inc., or the Online News Association. Many news organizations also have their own codes of ethics that guide journalists' professional publications. For instance, The New York Times code of standards and ethics is considered particularly rigorous.

When crafting news stories, regardless of the medium, fairness and bias are issues of concern to journalists. Some stories are intended to represent the author's own opinion; others are more neutral or feature balanced points-of-view. In a traditional print newspaper and its online version, information is organized into sections. This makes clear the distinction between content based on fact and on opinion. In other media, many of these distinctions break down. Readers should pay careful attention to headings and other design elements to ensure that they understand the journalist's intent. Opinion pieces are generally written by regular columnists or appear in a section titled "Op-ed", these reflect a journalist's own opinions and ideology. While feature stories, breaking news, and hard news stories typically make efforts to remove opinion from the copy.

According to Robert McChesney, healthy journalism in a democratic country must provide an opinion of people in power and who wish to be in power, must include a range of opinions and must regard the informational needs of all people.

Many debates centre on whether journalists are "supposed" to be "objective" and "neutral"; arguments include the fact that journalists produce news out of and as part of a particular social context, and that they are guided by professional codes of ethics and do their best to represent all legitimate points of view. Additionally, the ability to render a subject's complex and fluid narrative with sufficient accuracy is sometimes challenged by the time available to spend with subjects, the affordances or constraints of the medium used to tell the story, and the evolving nature of people's identities.

Forms

There are several forms of journalism with diverse audiences. Journalism is said to serve the role of a "fourth estate", acting as a watchdog on the workings of the government. A single publication (such as a newspaper) contains many forms of journalism, each of which may be presented in different formats. Each section of a newspaper, magazine, or website may cater to a different audience.

Photojournalists photographing US President Barack Obama in November 2013.
 
Photo and broadcast journalists interviewing a government official after a building collapse in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. March 2013.

Some forms include:

  • Access journalism – journalists who self-censor and voluntarily cease speaking about issues that might embarrass their hosts, guests, or powerful politicians or businesspersons.
  • Advocacy journalism – writing to advocate particular viewpoints or influence the opinions of the audience.
  • Broadcast journalism – written or spoken journalism for radio or television
Media greeting Cap Anamur II's Rupert Neudeck in Hamburg, 1986 at a press conference

Social media

The rise of social media has drastically changed the nature of journalistic reporting, giving rise to so-called citizen journalists. In a 2014 study of journalists in the United States, 40% of participants claimed they rely on social media as a source, with over 20% depending on microblogs to collect facts. From this, the conclusion can be drawn that breaking news nowadays often stems from user-generated content, including videos and pictures posted online in social media. However, though 69.2% of the surveyed journalists agreed that social media allowed them to connect to their audience, only 30% thought it had a positive influence on news credibility. In addition to this, a recent study done by Pew Research Center shows that eight-in-ten Americans are getting their news from digital devices.

Consequently, this has resulted in arguments to reconsider journalism as a process distributed among many authors, including the socially mediating public, rather than as individual products and articles written by dedicated journalists.

Because of these changes, the credibility ratings of news outlets has reached an all-time low. A 2014 study revealed that only 22% of Americans reported a "great deal" or "quite a lot of confidence" in either television news or newspapers.

Fake news

"Fake news" is also deliberately untruthful information, which can often spread quickly on social media or by means of fake news websites. News cannot be regarded as "fake", but disinformation rather.

It is often published to intentionally mislead readers to ultimately benefit a cause, organization or an individual. A glaring example was the proliferation of fake news in social media during the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Conspiracy theories, hoaxes, and lies have been circulated under the guise of news reports to benefit specific candidates. One example is a fabricated report of Hillary Clinton's email which was published by a non-existent newspaper called The Denver Guardian. Many critics blamed Facebook for the spread of such material. Its news feed algorithm, in particular, was identified by Vox as the platform where the social media giant exercise billions of editorial decisions every day. Social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and TikTok are distributors of disinformation or "fake news". Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook, has acknowledged the company's role in this problem: in a testimony before a combined Senate Judiciary and Commerce committee hearing on 20 April 2018, he said:

It's clear now that we didn't do enough to prevent these tools from being used for harm as well. That goes for fake news, foreign interference in elections, and hate speech, as well as developers and data privacy.

Readers can often evaluate credibility of news by examining the credibility of the underlying news organization.

The phrase was popularized and used by Donald Trump during his presidential campaign to discredit what he perceived as negative news coverage of his candidacy and then the presidency.

In some countries, including Turkey, Egypt, India, Bangladesh, Iran, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Kenya, Cote d’Ivoire, Montenegro, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Malaysia, Singapore, Philippines, and Somalia journalists have been threatened or arrested for allegedly spreading fake news about the COVID-19 pandemic.

History

Antiquity

While publications reporting the news to the general public in a standardized fashion only began to appear in the 17th century and later, governments as early as Han dynasty China made use of regularly published news bulletins. Similar publications were established in the Republic of Venice in the 16th century. These bulletins, however, were intended only for government officials, and thus were not journalistic news publications in the modern sense of the term.

Early modern newspapers

As mass-printing technologies like the printing press spread, newspapers were established to provide increasingly literate audiences with the news. The first references to privately owned newspaper publishers in China date to the late Ming dynasty in 1582. Johann Carolus's Relation aller Fürnemmen und gedenckwürdigen Historien, published in 1605 in Strasbourg, is often recognized as the first newspaper in Europe.

Freedom of the press was formally established in Great Britain in 1695, with Alan Rusbridger, former editor of The Guardian, stating: "licensing of the press in Britain was abolished in 1695. Remember how the freedoms won here became a model for much of the rest of the world, and be conscious how the world still watches us to see how we protect those freedoms." The first successful English daily, the Daily Courant, was published from 1702 to 1735. While journalistic enterprises were started as private ventures in some regions, such as the Holy Roman Empire and the British Empire, other countries such as France and Prussia kept tighter control of the press, treating it primarily as an outlet for government propaganda and subjecting it to uniform censorship. Other governments, such as the Russian Empire, were even more distrusting of the journalistic press and effectively banned journalistic publications until the mid-19th century. As newspaper publication became a more and more established practice, publishers would increase publication to a weekly or daily rate. Newspapers were more heavily concentrated in cities that were centres of trade, such as Amsterdam, London, and Berlin. The first newspapers in Latin America would be established in the mid-to-late 19th century.

News media and the revolutions of the 18th and 19th centuries

Newspapers played a significant role in mobilizing popular support in favor of the liberal revolutions of the late 18th and 19th centuries. In the American Colonies, newspapers motivated people to revolt against British rule by publishing grievances against the British crown and republishing pamphlets by revolutionaries such as Thomas Paine, while loyalist publications motivated support against the American Revolution. News publications in the United States would remain proudly and publicly partisan throughout the 19th century. In France, political newspapers sprang up during the French Revolution, with L'Ami du peuple, edited by Jean-Paul Marat, playing a particularly famous role in arguing for the rights of the revolutionary lower classes. Napoleon would reintroduce strict censorship laws in 1800, but after his reign print publications would flourish and play an important role in political culture. As part of the Revolutions of 1848, radical liberal publications such as the Rheinische Zeitung, Pesti Hírlap, and Morgenbladet would motivate people toward deposing the aristocratic governments of Central Europe. Other liberal publications played a more moderate role: The Russian Bulletin praised Alexander II of Russia's liberal reforms in the late 19th century, and supported increased political and economic freedoms for peasants as well as the establishment of a parliamentary system in Russia. Farther to the left, socialist and communist newspapers had wide followings in France, Russia and Germany despite being outlawed by the government.

Early 20th century

China

Journalism in China before 1910 primarily served the international community. The overthrow of the old imperial regime in 1911 produced a surge in Chinese nationalism, an end to censorship, and a demand for professional, nation-wide journalism. All the major cities launched such efforts. By the late 1920s, however, there was a much greater emphasis on advertising and expanding circulation, and much less interest in the sort of advocacy journalism that had inspired the revolutionaries.

France

The Parisian newspapers were largely stagnant after the First World War; circulation inched up to six million a day from five million in 1910. The major postwar success story was Paris Soir; which lacked any political agenda and was dedicated to providing a mix of sensational reporting to aid circulation, and serious articles to build prestige. By 1939 its circulation was over 1.7 million, double that of its nearest rival the tabloid Le Petit Parisien. In addition to its daily paper Paris Soir sponsored a highly successful women's magazine Marie-Claire. Another magazine Match was modeled after the photojournalism of the American magazine Life. 

Great Britain

By 1900 popular journalism in Britain aimed at the largest possible audience, including the working class, had proven a success and made its profits through advertising. Alfred Harmsworth, 1st Viscount Northcliffe (1865–1922), "More than anyone... shaped the modern press. Developments he introduced or harnessed remain central: broad contents, exploitation of advertising revenue to subsidize prices, aggressive marketing, subordinate regional markets, independence from party control. His Daily Mail held the world record for daily circulation until his death. Prime Minister Lord Salisbury quipped it was "written by office boys for office boys".

Described as "the scoop of the century", as a rookie journalist for The Daily Telegraph in 1939 Clare Hollingworth was the first to report the outbreak of World War II. While travelling from Poland to Germany, she spotted and reported German forces massed on the Polish border; The Daily Telegraph headline read: "1,000 tanks massed on Polish border "; three days later she was the first to report the German invasion of Poland.

During World War II, George Orwell worked as a journalist at The Observer for seven years, and its editor David Astor gave a copy of Orwell’s essay "Politics and the English Language"—a critique of vague, slovenly language—to every new recruit. In 2003, literary editor at the newspaper Robert McCrum wrote, "Even now, it is quoted in our style book".

India

The first newspaper of India, Hicky's Bengal Gazette, was published on 29 January 1780. This first effort at journalism enjoyed only a short stint yet it was a momentous development, as it gave birth to modern journalism in India. Following Hicky's efforts which had to be shut down just within two years of circulation, several English newspapers started publication in the aftermath. Most of them enjoyed a circulation figure of about 400 and were weeklies giving personal news items and classified advertisements about a variety of products. Later on, in the 1800s, English newspapers were started by Indian publishers with English-speaking Indians as the target audience. During that era vast differences in language was a major problem in facilitating smooth communication among the people of the country. This is because they hardly knew the languages prevalent in other parts of this vast land. However, English became a lingua franca across the country. Notable among this breed is the one named 'Bengal Gazette' started by Gangadhar Bhattacharyya in 1816.

United States

The late 19th and early 20th century in the United States saw the advent of media empires controlled by the likes of William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer. Realizing that they could expand their audience by abandoning politically polarized content, thus making more money off of advertising, American newspapers began to abandon their partisan politics in favor of less political reporting starting around 1900. Newspapers of this era embraced sensationalized reporting and larger headline typefaces and layouts, a style that would become dubbed "yellow journalism". Newspaper publishing became much more heavily professionalized in this era, and issues of writing quality and workroom discipline saw vast improvement. This era saw the establishment of freedom of the press as a legal norm, as President Theodore Roosevelt tried and failed to sue newspapers for reporting corruption in his handling of the purchase of the Panama Canal. Still, critics note that although government's ability to suppress journalistic speech is heavily limited, the concentration of newspaper (and general media) ownership in the hands of a small number of private business owners leads to other biases in reporting and media self-censorship that benefits the interests of corporations and the government.

African-American press

The rampant discrimination and segregation against African-Americans led to the founding their own daily and weekly newspapers, especially in large cities. While the first Black newspapers in America were established in the early 19th century, in the 20th century these newspapers truly flourished in major cities, with publishers playing a major role in politics and business affairs. Representative leaders included Robert Sengstacke Abbott (1870–1940), publisher of the Chicago Defender; John Mitchell, Jr. (1863–1929), editor of the Richmond Planet and president of the National Afro-American Press Association; Anthony Overton (1865–1946), publisher of the Chicago Bee, and Robert Lee Vann (1879–1940), the publisher and editor of the Pittsburgh Courier.

College

Although it is not completely necessary to have attended college to be a journalist, over the past few years it has become more common to attend. With this becoming more popular, jobs are starting to require a degree to be hired. The first school of Journalism opened as part of the University of Missouri in 1908. In the History Of Journalism page, it goes into depth on how journalism has evolved into what it is today. As of right now, there are a couple different routes one can take if interested in journalism. If one wanting to expand their skills as a journalist, there are many college courses and workshops one can take. If going the full college route, the average time is takes to graduate with a journalism degree is 4 years.

The top 5 ranked journalism schools in the US for the school year of 2022 are: 1. Washington and Lee University. 2. Northwestern University. 3. Georgetown University. 4. Columbia University in the City of New York. 5. University of Wisconsin - Madison.

Writing for experts or for ordinary citizens

In the 1920s in the United States, as newspapers dropped their blatant partisanship in search of new subscribers, political analyst Walter Lippmann and philosopher John Dewey debated the role of journalism in a democracy. Their differing philosophies still characterize an ongoing debate about the role of journalism in society. Lippmann's views prevailed for decades, helping to bolster the Progressives' confidence in decision-making by experts, with the general public standing by. Lippmann argued that high-powered journalism was wasted on ordinary citizens, but was of genuine value to an elite class of administrators and experts. Dewey, on the other hand, believed not only that the public was capable of understanding the issues created or responded to by the elite, but also that it was in the public forum that decisions should be made after discussion and debate. When issues were thoroughly vetted, then the best ideas would bubble to the surface. The danger of demagoguery and false news did not trouble Dewey. His faith in popular democracy has been implemented in various degrees, and is now known as "community journalism". The 1920s debate has been endlessly repeated across the globe, as journalists wrestle with their roles.

Radio

Radio broadcasting increased in popularity starting in the 1920s, becoming widespread in the 1930s. While most radio programming was oriented toward music, sports, and entertainment, radio also broadcast speeches and occasional news programming. Radio reached the peak of its importance during World War II, as radio and newsreels were major sources of up-to-date information on the ongoing war. In the Soviet Union, radio would be heavily utilized by the state to broadcast political speeches by leadership. These broadcasts would very rarely have any additional editorial content or analysis, setting them apart from modern news reporting. The radio would however soon be eclipsed by broadcast television starting in the 1950s.

Television

Starting in the 1940s, United States broadcast television channels would air 10-to-15-minute segments of news programming one or two times per evening. The era of live-TV news coverage would begin in the 1960s with the assassination of John F. Kennedy, broadcast and reported to live on a variety of nationally syndicated television channels. During the 60s and 70s, television channels would begin adding regular morning or midday news shows. Starting in 1980 with the establishment of CNN, news channels began providing 24-hour news coverage, a format which persists through today.

Digital age

Journalists at a press conference

The role and status of journalism, as well as mass media, has undergone changes over the last two decades, together with the advancement of digital technology and publication of news on the Internet. This has created a shift in the consumption of print media channels, as people increasingly consume news through e-readers, smartphones, and other electronic devices. News organizations are challenged to fully monetize their digital wing, as well as improvise on the context in which they publish in print. Newspapers have seen print revenues sink at a faster pace than the rate of growth for digital revenues.

Notably, in the American media landscape, newsrooms have reduced their staff and coverage as traditional media channels, such as television, grappling with declining audiences. For example, between 2007 and 2012, CNN edited its story packages into nearly half of their original time length.

The compactness in coverage has been linked to broad audience attrition. According to the Pew Research Center, the circulation for U.S. newspapers has fallen sharply in the 21st century. The digital era also introduced journalism whose development is done by ordinary citizens, with the rise of citizen journalism being possible through the Internet. Using video camera-equipped smartphones, active citizens are now enabled to record footage of news events and upload them onto channels like YouTube (which is often discovered and used by mainstream news media outlets). News from a variety of online sources, like blogs and other social media, results in a wider choice of official and unofficial sources, rather than only traditional media organizations.

Journalist interviewing a cosplayer

Demographics in 2016

A worldwide sample of 27,500 journalists in 67 countries in 2012-2016 produced the following profile:

  • 57 percent male;
  • Mean age of 38
  • Mean years of experience:13
  • College degree: 56 percent; graduate degree: 29 percent
  • 61 percent specialized in journalism/communications at college
  • 62 percent identified as generalists and 23 percent as hard-news beat journalists
  • 47 percent were members of a professional association
  • 80 percent worked full-time
  • 50 percent worked in print, 23 percent in television, 17 percent in radio, and 16 percent online.

Ethics and standards

News photographers and reporters waiting behind a police line in New York City, in May 1994

While various existing codes have some differences, most share common elements including the principles of – truthfulness, accuracy, objectivity, impartiality, fairness and public accountability – as these apply to the acquisition of newsworthy information and its subsequent dissemination to the public.

Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel propose several guidelines for journalists in their book The Elements of Journalism. Their view is that journalism's first loyalty is to the citizenry and that journalists are thus obliged to tell the truth and must serve as an independent monitor of powerful individuals and institutions within society. In this view, the essence of journalism is to provide citizens with reliable information through the discipline of verification.

Some journalistic Codes of Ethics, notably the European ones, also include a concern with discriminatory references in news based on race, religion, sexual orientation, and physical or mental disabilities. The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe approved in 1993 Resolution 1003 on the Ethics of Journalism which recommends journalists to respect the presumption of innocence, in particular in cases that are still sub judice.

In the UK, all newspapers are bound by the Code of Practice of the Independent Press Standards Organisation. This includes points like respecting people's privacy and ensuring accuracy. However, the Media Standards Trust has criticized the PCC, claiming it needs to be radically changed to secure the public trust of newspapers.

This is in stark contrast to the media climate prior to the 20th century, where the media market was dominated by smaller newspapers and pamphleteers who usually had an overt and often radical agenda, with no presumption of balance or objectivity.

Because of the pressure on journalists to report news promptly and before their competitors, factual errors occur more frequently than in writing produced and edited under less time pressure. Thus a typical issue of a major daily newspaper may contain several corrections of articles published the previous day. Perhaps the most famous journalistic mistake caused by time pressure was the Dewey Defeats Truman edition of the Chicago Daily Tribune, based on early election returns that failed to anticipate the actual result of the 1948 US presidential election.

Codes of ethics

There are over 242 codes of ethics in journalism that vary across various regions of the world. The codes of ethics are created through an interaction of different groups of people such as the public and journalists themselves. Most of the codes of ethics serve as a representation of the economic and political beliefs of the society where the code was written. Despite the fact that there are a variety of codes of ethics, some of the core elements present in all codes are: remaining objective, providing the truth, and being honest.

Journalism does not have a universal code of conduct; individuals are not legally obliged to follow a certain set of rules like a doctor or a lawyer does. There have been discussions for creating a universal code of conduct in journalism. One suggestion centers on having three claims for credibility, justifiable consequence, and the claim of humanity. Within the claim of credibility, journalists are expected to provide the public with reliable and trustworthy information, and allowing the public to question the nature of the information and its acquisition. The second claim of justifiable consequences centers on weighing the benefits and detriments of a potentially harmful story and acting accordingly. An example of justifiable consequence is exposing a professional with dubious practices; on the other hand, acting within justifiable consequence means writing compassionately about a family in mourning. The third claim is the claim of humanity which states that journalists are writing for a global population and therefore must serve everyone globally in their work, avoiding smaller loyalties to country, city, etc.

Legal status

Turkish journalists protesting imprisonment of their colleagues on Human Rights Day, 10 December 2016
 
Number of journalists reported killed between 2002 and 2013

Governments have widely varying policies and practices towards journalists, which control what they can research and write, and what press organizations can publish. Some governments guarantee the freedom of the press; while other nations severely restrict what journalists can research or publish.

Journalists in many nations have some privileges that members of the general public do not, including better access to public events, crime scenes and press conferences, and to extended interviews with public officials, celebrities and others in the public eye.

Journalists who elect to cover conflicts, whether wars between nations or insurgencies within nations, often give up any expectation of protection by government, if not giving up their rights to protection from the government. Journalists who are captured or detained during a conflict are expected to be treated as civilians and to be released to their national government. Many governments around the world target journalists for intimidation, harassment, and violence because of the nature of their work.

Right to protect confidentiality of sources

Journalists' interaction with sources sometimes involves confidentiality, an extension of freedom of the press giving journalists a legal protection to keep the identity of a confidential informant private even when demanded by police or prosecutors; withholding their sources can land journalists in contempt of court, or in jail.

In the United States, there is no right to protect sources in a federal court. However, federal courts will refuse to force journalists to reveal their sources, unless the information the court seeks is highly relevant to the case and there's no other way to get it. State courts provide varying degrees of such protection. Journalists who refuse to testify even when ordered to can be found in contempt of court and fined or jailed. On the journalistic side of keeping sources confidential, there is also a risk to the journalist's credibility because there can be no actual confirmation of whether the information is valid. As such it is highly discouraged for journalists to have confidential sources.

Cryogenics

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryogenics...