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Democracy & What’s News – What’s a Citizen To Do?
Youth Summit 2009
LESSON 2
What is the history of free press and why does it matter?
Objectives
Handouts
Students understand how “free press” developed and evolved in America.
(2-1) John Peter Zenger and Freedom of the Press; (2-2) History of
Freedom of the Press; (2-3) Whatever Happened to the News?
Background Founding Fathers on Watchdog Reporting, by Anthony Lewis
A. Daily warm-up
Check for understanding about the previous lesson. Ask, “What do you remember
about the class hearing or youth summit?” “What surprised you about responses to
your free press interviews?”
What’s news? Two sites easy-to-navigate sites that support free press in America and
around the world include The Detroit Free Press’ Newspapers in Education,
http://nieonline.com/detroit/frontpage.cfm, and the Columbia Journalism Review,
http://www.cjr.org/resources/.
B. History of free press – Zenger is a zinger!
Strategy: Date the quote warm-up. A historical quote for your students - ask them
when they think this quote was made:
“The more I observe the main effects of a free press, the more convinced am I
that, in the modern world, freedom of the press is the principal... element of
freedom.”
Talking points: What “main effects?” of a free press might the author refer to? Why
might the author place free press as the most important element of freedom?
The quote is from Alexis de Tocqueville when he wrote about his two-year (1831-2) visit
to America. (For a lesson on de Tocqueville’s view of America, see www.crfusa.org/election-central/de-tocqueville-america.html.)
Activity: Telling the story. This is for ham-bone teachers out there – the ones who love
to tell stories. The Constitutional Rights Foundation, always a reliable source of civic
education materials, developed a first-rate history lesson of the 1735 John Peter Zenger
trial – better than anything on Law & Order, Court TV, or Oprah. It is copied in its
entirety in Handout 3-1.
Teachers may use CRF’s lesson or simply tell the story of John Peter Zenger – and it is a
great story! See the discussion questions at the end of the lesson for great talking points
in your class. Possible extensions may include:
• role play the story
• put on a mock trial of the Zenger case
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small or large group discussion; topics could include (teachers: consider posting
the following questions on the board at the beginning of the lesson):
-
What did the Zenger case decide?
Why was it important?
Why is it important today?
(linking Lesson 2) What core values of democracy did the Zenger jury
exercise? What about Zenger himself? His attorney?
C. What happened over time?
Activity: Create a timeline. See Handout 2-2, History of Freedom of the Press. Working in
small groups, students construct a timeline of free press events in our history. Middle
school teachers may wish to chunk it by assigning the reading in paragraphs or pages to
make the reading more manageable. Construct a master timeline by comparing and
combining results from all groups.
Advanced classes may not only construct timelines of historical events described in
Handout 2-2 but also track the shift from hard news to “infotainment” described in
Handout 2-3, Whatever Happened to the News? When hard news goes soft, entertainment takes
over. This is also an excellent background piece for all teachers.
For more on the founding fathers and free press, see Anthony Lewis’ commentary,
“Founding Fathers on Watchdog Reporting” backgrounder.
D.
Extended Activities
Homework / Journal Entry
Journal Entry: Something I learned today about the connections between democracy,
the press, and being a citizen is
.
Role play and mock trial of Zenger (as above).
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Handout 2-1
John Peter Zenger and Freedom of the Press
CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS FOUNDATION, Bill of Rights in Action, Fall 2006
Should someone be prosecuted for criticizing or insulting a government official even if the
offending words are the truth? Should a judge or a jury decide the case? These were the
key questions argued in the colonial New York trial of John Peter Zenger.
As early as 1275, the English Parliament had outlawed "any slanderous News" that may
cause "discord" between the king and his people. Slander, however, only referred to the
spoken word. Published works became a much more serious threat to kings and
parliaments after the invention of printing greatly enhanced communication in the 1400s.
By the 1500s, King Henry VIII of England required all writing be censored and licensed by
royal officials before being printed. Known as "prior restraint," this heavy-handed control
over the printed word resulted in prosecutions of authors and printers who published
unlicensed writings.
In England, a powerful royal council known as the Star Chamber controlled the licensing of
printed works. (The council got its name because stars covered the ceiling of its meeting
room.) The Star Chamber created a new crime regarding printed works called libel. Libel
included any published material that defamed the Church of England, had obscenity that
offended public morality, or attacked the reputation of private individuals.
"Seditious libel" was the most serious crime involving the printed word. Various Star
Chamber rulings defined this crime as insults to the government and its laws and malicious
criticism of government officials that could cause people to disrespect them. Kings and
parliaments were fearful that such attacks on their reputations might lead to public disorder
or even revolution.
The Star Chamber ruled that the truth of printed words did not matter. Truth was not a
defense in libel cases. In fact, the Star Chamber considered truthful statements that libeled
the government or its officials as even more dangerous than false ones. People would
more easily dismiss false statements.
Parliament abolished the Star Chamber in 1642, and the last licensing laws expired by
1695. Even so, trial courts continued to enforce the Star Chamber libel laws and
procedures. Judges decided whether printed words were libelous as a matter of law. Juries
decided only if a defendant had published the words in question.
Thus, by 1700, "freedom of the press" in England only meant no government licensing
("prior restraint"). Once authors and printers had published their writing, English officials
could still prosecute them for seditious libel in the courts. As for "freedom of speech," only
members of Parliament had the right to speak their minds without fear of arrest by the king.
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War of Words Against the Governor
The American colonies followed English law and court precedent on seditious libel. Royal
governors and their councils were always on guard against insults in newspapers and
political pamphlets.
In 1732, William Cosby arrived in New York as that colony’s newly appointed royal
governor. He was quick-tempered, arrogant, and greedy. Among his first acts was to
demand half the salary paid to Rip Van Dam, the colonial official who had acted as
governor when the previous one suddenly died.
When Van Dam refused to give up half his salary to Governor Cosby, Cosby decided to
sue Van Dam. Fearing that jurors would find against him, Cosby wanted to avoid a jury trial.
Without the approval of the colonial assembly, Cosby appointed a special court of three
justices to hear the case without a jury. In April 1733, Van Dam’s lawyer argued that the
special court was illegal. The chief justice, Lewis Morris, agreed. But the other two justices,
James DeLancey and Frederick Philipse, sided with Governor Cosby.
Cosby dismissed Morris and elevated DeLancey to chief justice. Morris along with Van
Dam launched a campaign to get the governor recalled by King George II.
Among other tactics, Morris and his friends established a newspaper, The New York
Weekly Journal, to attack Governor Cosby in print. They hired a print shop owner, John
Peter Zenger, to publish their writing. Zenger operated the printing press while James
Alexander, a lawyer friend of Morris, served as editor. Alexander and others belonging to
the Morris faction produced all the newspaper’s content.
For several months, The New York Weekly Journal published a wide range of materials
criticizing and ridiculing Governor Cosby. These included essays by writers using the
names of Roman statesmen as pen names that implied Governor Cosby was a tyrant.
Morris and his friends also wrote letters to the editor (all under pseudonyms), attacking the
royal governor. One excerpt from a letter became a key piece of evidence for seditious
libel:
We see men’s deeds destroyed, judges arbitrarily displaced, new courts erected without
consent of the legislature, by which it seems to me trial by juries are taken away when a
governor pleases. . . .
The newspaper also printed satirical drinking songs with Cosby as the target. The songs
accused the governor of aiding the enemy French, depriving New Yorkers of their liberties,
and plotting to reduce them to slavery. The newspaper also ran phony advertisements (an
early form of political cartoons), ridiculing the governor. One described him as a monkey.
Cosby fought back. He tried to silence Zenger’s press by seeking a grand jury indictment
against him for seditious libel. The grand jury refused to indict Zenger.
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Cosby then asked the New York colonial assembly to prosecute him. It refused. The
regular courts also declined to take any action against Zenger.
In November 1734, Cosby turned to his own council, which included Chief Justice
Delancey, to issue an arrest warrant against Zenger. Bail was set at an enormous amount,
assuring Zenger would remain in jail pending his trial. But Zenger’s wife continued to
operate his press and turned out more issues of the Weekly Journal.
Governor Cosby still failed to get a grand jury indictment against Zenger. Cosby’s attorney
general, Richard Bradley, then issued an "information" against the printer. This is a way for
a public prosecutor to accuse someone of a crime without a traditional grand jury
indictment. Bradley charged Zenger with printing items that were "false, scandalous,
malicious, and seditious."
Zenger on Trial
The only court that would try the case against Zenger was the one created by Governor
Cosby and now headed by Chief Justice DeLancey. James Alexander (editor of the Weekly
Journal) and another lawyer appeared to defend Zenger when the court convened in April
1735.
The two defense lawyers immediately claimed that the court was illegal and biased.
DeLancey disbarred both lawyers for contempt of court. He appointed an inexperienced
young lawyer to defend Zenger.
The clerk of the court, another Cosby ally, attempted to rig the selection of the jury
members against Zenger, but Zenger’s defense attorney challenged the clerk’s action.
Chief Justice DeLancey, confident that the case against Zenger was open and shut,
ordered the normal selection process to proceed, which resulted in an impartial jury.
When Zenger’s trial finally began in August 1735, he had been in jail nine months. Attorney
General Bradley in his opening statement accused Zenger of being "a seditious person"
who had printed "a certain false, malicious, seditious, scandalous libel entitled The New
York Weekly Journal." He had done this, said Bradley, "to the great disturbance of the
peace." Bradley presented various issues of the newspaper as evidence of seditious libel
against Governor Cosby.
Under English court precedent, all Bradley had to prove to the jury was that Zenger printed
the newspaper. Chief Justice DeLancey would then decide if it was libelous.
Then, the unexpected happened. From the audience rose Andrew Hamilton, the most
famous trial lawyer in the American colonies. The disbarred defense lawyers had arranged
for him to take over the case. Zenger’s youthful appointed attorney quickly withdrew.
Starting with legal arguments developed by James Alexander, Hamilton admitted that
Zenger had printed The New York Weekly Journal. But Hamilton went on to argue that
Zenger had the right to do this as long as the publication "can be supported with truth."
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Hamilton pointed to the charges against Zenger accusing him of printing things that were
"false." Hamilton said that if Attorney General Bradley could prove the printed words were
not true, Hamilton would agree they were libelous.
Shocked at this "truth defense," Chief Justice DeLancey said Hamilton could not continue
with it. Under English law, said DeLancey, the truth did not matter in libel cases. "No, Mr.
Hamilton," DeLancey ruled, "the jury may find that Zenger printed and published these
papers, and leave it to the court to judge whether they are libelous."
Hamilton, however, ignored the chief justice and boldly made his arguments directly to the
members of the jury. He asked them, "Are we to believe that truth is a greater sin than
falsehood?" If we leave the matter of libelous words up to judges, he continued, this would
"render juries useless."
Hamilton told the jurors, "it is you that we must now appeal for witness to the truth."
Foreshadowing the American Revolution, Hamilton argued that telling the truth did not
cause governments to fall. Rather, he argued, "abuse of power" caused governments to
fall.
Hamilton concluded by telling the jurors that if Zenger printed the truth, no libel had taken
place, and they should find him not guilty. "Truth ought to govern the whole affair of libels,"
he said.
But Chief Justice DeLancey instructed the jury only to decide if Zenger printed the
newspaper. Whether it contained libels, he told the jurors, would be a matter for the judges
to decide.
Twelve men deliberated a short time and then announced Zenger was not guilty of printing
and publishing libels. Thus, they went over the head of DeLancey and decided for
themselves that there was truth in what Zenger had printed. The crowd in the courtroom
cheered as Chief Justice DeLancey left in disgust.
Freedom of the Press in the U.S.
The Zenger jury verdict did not establish a court precedent since only the rulings of judges
do that. But accounts of the trial were widely published in the colonies and England. On
both sides of the Atlantic, the trial sparked debates about the meaning of freedom of the
press.
After the trial, royal officials in the colonies brought few seditious libel prosecutions. They
were afraid that juries would refuse to convict. Colonial assemblies, however, continued
with prosecutions.
After the American Revolution and the writing of the Constitution, the Bill of Rights was
adopted. The First Amendment to the Constitution guaranteed that "Congress shall make
no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press . . . ." Yet Congress in 1798
passed the Sedition Act, which prohibited printing most criticism of the U.S. government or
its elected leaders. This law expired in 1801, and its constitutionality was never tested in
court.
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But even the Sedition Act deferred to the Zenger decision. The law enabled juries to decide
in favor of the defendant if the printed words were true or were without malice.
Prosecutions for seditious libel by government officials eventually died out in the United
States. Today, Americans consider it a basic right to be able to criticize government
officials without fear of punishment. The U.S. Supreme Court cited the Zenger case in its
landmark 1964 free-press decision of New York Times v. Sullivan: "The American Colonists
were not willing, nor should we be, to take the risk that ‘[m]en who injure and oppress the
people under their administration [and] provoke them to cry out and complain’ will also be
empowered to ‘make that very complaint the foundation for new oppressions and
prosecutions.’ "
For Discussion and Writing
1. What was seditious libel? What was its purpose? Why did English law say that the truth
did not matter in prosecutions for seditious libel?
2. What did "freedom of the press" mean under English law in 1700? Do you think English
law protected freedom of the press? Why or why not?
3. What did the Zenger case decide? Why was the case important?
4. What does the quote at the end of the article mean? Do you agree with it? Explain.
5. Today some people argue that elected government officials should never be able to sue
for libel even in cases where false information about them is published intentionally and
maliciously. Do you agree or disagree? Why?
For Further Reading
Levy, Leonard W. Emergence of a Free Press. New York: Oxford University Press, 1985.
Putnam, William Lowell. John Peter Zenger and the Fundamental Freedom. Jefferson,
N.C.: McFarland & Co., 1997.
ACTIVITY
What Is Libel Today?
Today in the United States, the crime of seditious libel is gone. But government officials can
file lawsuits for libel against individuals and win money damages. These lawsuits, however,
can only succeed when someone publishes something about an official with "actual
malice." Actual malice in this context does not mean ill-will. It means the libelous statement
was published "with knowledge that it was false or with reckless disregard of whether it was
false or not." This rule was set forth in the 1964 case of New York Times v. Sullivan.
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The court in Sullivan explained that it was not enough to allow truth as a defense to libel
cases involving public officials. Proving the truth of statements is difficult and expensive. If
defendants had to prove their statements were true, many people would refrain from
criticizing officials even though their criticism "is believed to be true and even though it is in
fact true, because of doubt whether it can be proved in court or fear of the expense of
having to do so." Requiring defendants to prove the truth of their statements "thus dampens
the vigor and limits the variety of public debate. It is inconsistent with the First and
Fourteenth Amendments."
Form groups that will role play juries. Using the rule from New York Times v. Sullivan, each
jury should review the following cases and decide whether actual malice existed. Each jury
should then report and explain the reasons for its decisions.
1. Rumors are circulating that a city councilman is a child molester. A newspaper prints the
rumors without checking them. They turn out to be false. The councilman sues the
newspaper for libel.
2. A radio talk show host accuses a member of Congress of taking bribes. She admits
accepting campaign contributions from certain organizations, but says they did not affect
her votes. There is no evidence that these were bribes for her legislative votes. The
congresswoman sues the radio host for libel.
3. A political candidate runs a campaign ad on TV that accuses the incumbent of being a
"traitor" for opposing the Iraq War. The incumbent sues her challenger for libel.
4. A blogger posts an article on a candidate for president from one of the major political
parties, calling him "a paranoid religious nut." The candidate sues the blogger after losing
the election.
www.crf-usa.org/bill-of-rights-in-action/bria-22-3-b-john-peter-zenger-and-freedom-of-the-press.html
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Handout 2-2
History of Freedom of the Press
1
Few provisions of the Bill of Rights to the U. S. Constitution stir deeper
2
emotions today than that guaranteeing freedom of the press. Whether viewed as a
3
protector of the people from the abuses of an unresponsive government or seen as
4
a self-serving business allowed to poke into matters better left uncovered, freedom
5
of the press -- and the degree of freedom that provision allows -- is a most
6
controversial issue.
7
As with virtually all of this nation's legal heritage, one must look back to the
8
history of England to see the circumstances which led our founding fathers to
9
include freedom of the press among the rights included in the Bill of Rights.
10
Ultimately, the history of the provision extends back to the advent of the printing
11
press.
12
Before the printing press came into use in the 16th century, mass
13
communication was possible only by speech; even then, words spoken to an
14
assembly would be lost, except for human memory, because there was no effective
15
way to record and disseminate a speaker's ideas. The printing press made possible
16
the mass distribution of ideas in a permanent form, and thus exposed rulers to
17
adverse criticism. Then, as now, heads of state were often displeased by critics. As
18
a result, there developed in England the law of seditious libel, which made it a crime
19
to criticize the sovereign in such a fashion as to cause resistance to the crown.
20
In spite of the oppressiveness of this law as it was then applied, none of the
21
early English bills and declarations of rights undertook to secure freedom of the
22
press. It was left to the American colonists to perceive the need to guarantee in
23
writing the freedom of the press.
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None of the founding colonial charters provided for such freedom. However,
2
the passage of years and the growing hostility toward England demonstrated to the
3
colonists the value of the right to criticize in print the actions of the government.
4
Even before the right had been secured by any bill of rights, a courageous
5
New York printer made freedom of the press a reality. In 1733, John Peter Zenger
6
began printing the New York Weekly Journal, which immediately ridiculed the
7
English governor, William Cosby, and his officials. By 1735, the governor had had
8
enough, and Zenger was arrested and jailed for seditious libel. Cosby was confident
9
of a conviction, but was stunned when Andrew Hamilton of Philadelphia, a most
10
respected lawyer in the colonies, rose to defend Zenger.
11
Hamilton's defense was unique. He admitted that Zenger had published the
12
offending newspaper articles, but he argued that the articles were true, so libel had
13
not been committed. The jury was so moved by Hamilton's summation that they
14
acquitted Zenger, holding, in effect, that truth is a defense to an action for libel, a
15
principle now enshrined in the law.
16
The first American assertion of a right to a free press resulted from a
17
resolution of the Continental Congress in 1774. The resolution enumerated the
18
rights of colonists, as perceived by the Continental Congress, and included this
19
statement:
20
"The last right we shall mention regards the freedom of the press. The
21
importance of this consists, besides the advancement of truth, science, morality and
22
arts in general, in its diffusion of liberal sentiments on the administration of
23
government, its ready communication of thoughts between subjects, and its
24
consequential promotion of union among them whereby oppressive officers are
25
shamed or intimidated into more honorable and just modes of conducting affairs."
26
On June 12, 1776, the Virginia Colonial Convention adopted the Declaration
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of Rights, the first true bill of rights in the American sense. One of the members of
2
the convention, George Mason, was responsible for virtually the entire declaration,
3
including a statement "(t)hat the freedom of the Press is one of the greatest
4
Bulwarks of liberty, and can never be restrained but by despotick Governments."
5
One of Mason's fellow committee members was James Madison, who later became
6
known as the father of the U.S. Constitution and a proponent of the Bill of Rights.
7
Following the Virginia example, eight of the remaining 12 colonies adopted
8
constitutions containing bills of rights, although only Pennsylvania and Vermont
9
made explicit reference to freedom of the press.
10
The Bill of Rights to the U. S. Constitution was added after the ratification of
11
the Constitution itself as a concession to secure the approval of some states which
12
were apprehensive because there was not a guarantee of fundamental freedoms in
13
the original document. Although the First Amendment forbade Congress from
14
passing any laws abridging freedom of the press, the old English law of seditious
15
libel was reinstated by a Federalist Congress in 1798 with the passage of the Alien
16
and Sedition Laws. Some editors were fined and jailed under these harsh laws,
17
although the laws eventually lapsed.
18
During the years that followed, freedom of the press was not always
19
scrupulously observed. During the Civil War, newspapers were sometimes shut
20
down for publishing articles critical of the war effort. This form of censorship was not
21
uncommon. However, in 1931, the Supreme Court put an end to "prior restraint" --
22
the practice of stopping a newspaper from printing a story because of what the story
23
might contain -- by concluding that such restraint was forbidden under the First
24
Amendment, which applied to the states as well as to the federal government under
25
the Fourteenth Amendment.
26
The debate over the limits of freedom of the press continues. The question
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of prior restraint reappeared when the Pentagon Papers were made public, while
2
publicity surrounding the arrest and trial of such people as Dr. Sam Sheppard and
3
Jack Ruby brought into conflict the limits of a free press and the right of a defendant
4
to a fair and impartial trial. The responsibility of the press has become more crucial
5
with recent court decisions liberalizing the law of defamation and whittling away at
6
the rights of public officials and public figures to sue for false statements about
7
them. The prolonged Watergate coverage polarized American thought. To some, the
8
press became the protector of our democratic institutions; to others, it seemed that
9
the press would destroy our government.
10
The debate still continues. And the right to hear all viewpoints on every
11
important question is guaranteed by freedom of the press, a vital part of our legal
12
heritage.
http://members.mobar.org/civics/PressFreedom.htm
Copyright © 2006 The Missouri Bar Association
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Handout 2-3
Whatever happened to the news?
When hard news goes soft, entertainment takes over
By Daniel Hallin
1
News has always mixed the serious and the entertaining. The tension between journalism
2
and commercialism goes back long before television, but it is felt with special intensity in
3
television news today.
4
In the early 1960s the networks, hugely profitable but worried about their images and about
5
regulatory pressures, expanded their news operations and largely freed them from the
6
pressures of commercial television. The "church" of news was to be separated from the
7
"state" of entertainment.
8
In the 1970s and '80s, however, the barrier between news and entertainment has been
9
increasingly eroded. Not all the changes of these years have been for the worse. But taken
10
together, they raise serious questions about the future of journalism in an entertainment-
11
dominated medium. A recent edition of the news tabloid A Current Affair, for example,
12
ended with the tease "Coming up– sex, murder and videotape, that's next!" It may be that
13
this is indeed the future of television news.
14
It was the local stations that first discovered, late in the 1960s, that news could make
15
money– lots of money. By the end of the '70s, news was frequently producing 60 percent of
16
a station's profits. With numbers like that, news was much "too important" to leave to
17
journalists, and a heavily entertainment-oriented form of programming began to evolve.
18
Often it was contrasted directly with the network news. 'Feel like you're getting a bad deal
19
from poker-faced TV news reporters?" asked San Francisco's KGO in one ad, "Then let the
20
Channel 7 Gang deal you in. They're not afraid to be friendly."
21
"When you mix fiction and news, you diminish the distinction between truth and fiction, and
22
you wear down the audience's own discriminating power to judge."
23
–Bill Moyers
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Competitive pressures began to impinge on network news in a serious way in the late
2
l970s. In 1976 ABC began a successful drive to make its news division competitive with
3
CBS and NBC. Its successful move into news was followed by the growth of cable, which
4
began to erode the networks' audience share. As outlined more fully elsewhere in this
5
issue, this new source of competition, combined with other economic conditions, put a
6
significant squeeze on network profits that has since come home to the news divisions in
7
the form of an unprecedented concern with the bottom line.
8
Free-Market Journalism
9
In Washington, meanwhile, the FCC was dismantling most of the regulatory framework that
10
had been imposed on the television industry since its beginnings, especially the obligation
11
vague, to be sure– to provide some minimum of serious public affairs programming.
12
Proponents of deregulation assumed that the free market would bring forth an age of
13
diversity in television programming. In fact, there is a lot more news on television now than
14
ever before. In a sense, there is also greater diversity. The last few years have seen a
15
proliferation of new forms of "reality-based programming." If we set aside live programming
16
and the Sunday interview shows, there were basically only two forms of public affairs
17
television in the 1960s: the evening news and the documentary.
18
In the '70s new forms appeared: the news magazine, represented first by 60 Minutes, and
19
local news in its modern, fast-paced "happy talk" form. Each breached the barrier between
20
news and entertainment in important ways. The decade also saw the consolidation of
21
morning news as a strongly entertainment-oriented form of programming. NBC's Today
22
show had pioneered such a form in the 1950s. In the '70s, ABC joined the field with Good
23
Morning America, produced by the entertainment division, and CBS abandoned hard news
24
in the morning to try and imitate Today.
25
The 1980s gave us two significant additions to public affairs programming, Nightline and
26
CNN. The latter, it might be added, is itself a complex mix of the serious and the trivial.
27
CNN has taken up slack from the established networks in live public affairs programming,
28
covering, for example, much of the Iran-Contra hearings ABC, CBS and NBC declined to
29
carry and providing electrifying live coverage of the massacre at Tiananmen Square. But
30
day in and day out, CNN news offerings resemble local news more than anything else,
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mixing short reports on political affairs with large doses of weather and human interest.
2
The '80s also saw a proliferation of 60 Minutes imitators, often with a particularly fast-
3
paced, glitzy style. And they have seen the demise of one important form of public affairs
4
programming: the documentary. More than any other public affairs programming, the
5
documentary unit CBS Reports, established in that period in the early '60s when the
6
networks were moving to head off regulatory pressures, stood apart from commercial
7
constraints. The works produced– Harvest of Shame, for instance, or The Selling of the
8
Pentagon– were hour-long statements about serious issues. Often a year or more in
9
production and featuring a clear point of view, they provided a unique perspective on many
10
problems, policies and controversial issues. Thanks to corporate scruples and bottom-line
11
consciousness, their day in commercial television is definitely over.
12
The Birth of Reality News
13
Most of today's growth, meanwhile, has been at the "low end" in a proliferation of shows
14
that practice what might be called "para-journalism." The most important new form is the
15
"tabloid" news magazine, including such shows as A Current Affair, Inside Edition, Hard
16
Copy and The Reporters.
17
In a way, these shows represent something very new. They are not news shows that
18
borrow conventions from entertainment television, but the other way around: entertainment
19
programs that borrow the aura of news. The forms and the "look" are news– the opening
20
sequences frequently feature typewriter keys and newsroom-like sets with monitors in the
21
background. The content, however, has little of the substance of journalism; above all, little
22
about public affairs.
23
In another sense, these shows are nothing new at all. What they have done is to take the
24
approach pioneered by the hybrid forms of the 1970s and push it to extremes. Local news
25
is typically concerned with crime, accidents and disasters, children lost and found and new
26
animals born at zoos; morning news with celebrities, health and "life styles." What all these
27
stories have in common is that they are about everyday life– and about its disruptions and
28
exaltations (crime, illness, the hero, the celebrity, the rescue). They are about private, not
29
public, life. The "softer" news shows have always traded heavily in this kind of material. But
30
they have mixed it with a measure of genuine journalism. Their origins in the older tradition
15
CLASSROOM LAW PROJECT
Democracy & What’s News – What’s An Informed Citizen To Do?
Youth Summit 2009
1
of public affairs reporting have also imposed some limits on what they will stoop to in the
2
way of sensationalism.
3
In the long run, there is reason for concern not only about the quality of the evening news,
4
but even its survival.
5
With the new "tabloids" these scruples are mostly out the window. Their appeal is to the
6
emotions, with no apologies; their interest in public affairs is not quite nil but very close
7
(issues with sufficient emotional content, like crime and AIDS, can still bring it out). They
8
have had great success with this model, and the rest of television news is sure to be sorely
9
tempted to compete with them.
10
New Agenda
11
The main vehicle for serious public affairs coverage, meanwhile, remains the network
12
evening news, which is widely seen as having betrayed the values of the so-called Golden
13
Age of Cronkite, Huntley and Brinkley. This view is not entirely accurate: like many "golden"
14
ages, television's early years have been very much romanticized.
15
In many ways the evening news is better now than it was in the '80s and early '70s. There
16
is nothing wrong with learning to use the medium effectively. The truth is that much of
17
television news 15 or 20 years ago was both dull and difficult to understand. There is
18
nothing wrong, either, with shifting the news agenda toward the kinds of stories more
19
meaningful to the average audience member. If television does more stories about health
20
or child care, up to a point that's a change for the better.
21
But the drive for ratings has produced many troubling practices, from the furious pace of
22
modem news to a tendency for journalists to scramble like politicians onto the bandwagon
23
of the latest wave of popular sentiment. In the mid-1980s the fashionable emotion was
24
patriotism. Today it is often the evils of drugs. Poker-faced objectivity gives way to
25
breathless moralism, as long as the issue is safe. The danger is both that passion will be
26
inflated at the expense of understanding and that the public agenda will be distorted, with
27
emotional issues blown up larger than life and less dramatic but equally serious ones
28
diminished.
16
CLASSROOM LAW PROJECT
Democracy & What’s News – What’s An Informed Citizen To Do?
Youth Summit 2009
1
In the long run, there is reason for concern not only about the quality of the evening news,
2
but even its survival. The networks expanded news programs to 30 minutes to begin with,
3
and affiliate stations carried them, not because it was profitable but because they were a
4
regulated industry and wanted the prestige of belonging to the Fourth Estate.
5
But the regulatory pressure is gone now, and the temptation for local stations to drop the
6
network news is increased by the fact that technology has made it possible for local
7
stations to cover many of the national and international events the networks have covered,
8
albeit usually in a sporadic and superficial way. Technology can transfer pictures from
9
Panama or Eastern Europe quickly and cheaply, while understanding of their context is
10
harder to come by.
11
Even now the amount of time American television devotes to the affairs of public life is tiny.
12
Most industrialized countries, for instance, have at least a full half-hour of national news in
13
prime time; the United States has 22-23 minutes (the length of an evening news broadcast
14
when commercials are eliminated) in "early fringe" time, with even the slots at 6 or 6:30
15
p.m. increasingly going to game shows and tabloids.
16
Some form of serious television journalism will surely survive. But it could well be reduced
17
to serving a specialized audience, while most of the public watches nothing but the softest
18
form of "infotainment." With most of the public getting its news from television already and
19
newspaper readership declining, the danger of creating a public that knows and cares little
20
about public life is very real.
21
Author:
22
Daniel C. Hallin is associate professor of communication at the University of California, San
23
Diego. He is author of The Uncensored War: The Media and Vietnam, and many other
24
articles on news and public life.
© 2002-2007 Center for Media Literacy
Source: www.medialit.org/reading_room/article441.html#top
17
CLASSROOM LAW PROJECT
Democracy & What’s News – What’s a Citizen To Do?
Youth Summit 2009
BACKGROUND
Founding Fathers on Watchdog Reporting
Nieman Watchdog editors asked Anthony Lewis to look into what the Founding
Fathers thought about watchdog reporting. He found big defenders in Madison and Jefferson.
Commentary by Anthony Lewis, April 08, 2004
Did the Framers of the First Amendment want to protect what we call watchdog reporting?
Were they ready to have officials suffer under the probing of a press that looks out for official
wrongdoing?
If we judge by the principal author of the First Amendment, James Madison, the answer to
those questions is an unhesitating Yes. Madison thought a press that kept watch on
government was essential to the survival of the new form of government he and his colleagues
had created, a federal republic. He had no illusions about the perfection of newspapers or the
people who wrote and edited them; he spoke of their "abuse." But he said they were entitled to
constitutional protection even when they published false statements, so valuable was their
role.
Madison set out his views in eloquent detail during the struggle over the Sedition Act of 1798.
Passed by a Federalist-dominated Congress and signed into law by a Federalist President,
John Adams, the statute made it a crime to criticize the President. It did not punish critics of
the Vice President, Thomas Jefferson, Adams's political enemy.
Federalist politicians said the Sedition Act was needed to counter the danger of French
Jacobin terror (after the French Revolution) infiltrating the United States. The real reason for it
was the Federalists' desire to put down Jeffersonian voices in the run-up to the election of
1800, when Adams would face Jefferson. Leading Jeffersonian editors and proprietors were
convicted under the act, fined and imprisoned. The statute supposedly allowed a defense of
truth. But Federalist judges upheld charges for language that was mere abuse, not factual.
James T. Callender was convicted for a book that called Adams a "hoary headed incendiary"
and told voters that the choice was between "Adams, war and beggary, and Jefferson, peace
and competency." Callender was sentenced to nine months in prison and a fine of $200.
Madison protested against the Sedition Act as a violation of the First Amendment, which had
been added to the Constitution only seven years before. A resolution drafted by him and
passed by the Virginia legislature said the act claimed a power "not delegated by the
Constitution, but, on the contrary, expressly and positively forbidden by one of the
amendments thereto – a power which, more than any other, ought to produce universal alarm,
because it is leveled against the right of freely examining public characters and measures, and
of free communication among the people thereon, which has ever been justly deemed the only
effectual guardian of every other right."
1
CLASSROOM LAW PROJECT
Democracy & What’s News – What’s a Citizen To Do?
Youth Summit 2009
"Examining public characters and measures" – that is what watchdog reporting does. Madison
wrote a Report on the Virginia Resolution that went deeper into the philosophical reasoning
behind the belief in a free, active press. The common law of England allowed suppression of
the press, he said. But the founding premise of government in this new country was "altogether
different," Madison said. "The people, not the government, possess the absolute sovereignty."
It followed that the people, the ultimate sovereigns, must have information on which to base
their decisions – their votes. "Is it not natural and necessary, under such different
circumstances, that a different degree of freedom in the use of the press should be
contemplated?"
Madison, though aware of its faults, praised the press in terms lavish enough to make us
blush. "Some degree of abuse is inseparable from the proper use of everything," he wrote,
"and in no instance is this more true than in that of the press. It has accordingly been decided
by practice of the States, that it is better to leave a few of its noxious branches to their luxuriant
growth, than, by pruning them away, to injure the vigor of those yielding the proper fruits. And
can the wisdom of this policy be doubted by any who reflect that to the press alone, chequered
as it is with abuses, the world is indebted for all the triumphs which have been gained by
reason and humanity over error and oppression…?"
Jefferson was perhaps less romantic about the press, but he saw its vital role in a democracy.
In 1786 he wrote a friend, Dr. J. Currie: "I deplore the putrid state into which our newspapers
have passed, and the malignity, the vulgarity, and mendacious spirit of those who write
them…. These ordures are rapidly depraving the public taste. It is however an evil for which
there is no remedy, our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited
without being lost."
Anthony Lewis, authority on the First Amendment, is a former New York Times columnist and
two time Pulitzer prize winner.
Source:
www.niemanwatchdog.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=background.view&backgroundid=0024&stopl
ayout=true&print=true&stoplayout=true&print=true
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