The power of the press : the birth of American political reporting
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
The power of the press : the birth of American political reporting
Oxford University Press, 1986
- pbk.
Available at 28 libraries
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Note
Bibliography: p. 225-267
Includes index
Description and Table of Contents
- Volume
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ISBN 9780195037197
Description
Many books have shown that journalists have political power, but none have offered a more wide-ranging account of how they got it. The Power of the Press is a pioneering look at the birth of political journalism. Before the American Revolution, Thomas Leonard notes, the press in the colonies was a timid enterprise, poorly protected by law and shy of government. Newspapers helped make the Revolution, but they were not fully aware of the way they could fit into a democracy. It was only in the nineteenth century that journalists learned to tell the stories and supply the pictures that made politics a national preoccupation. Leonard traces the rise of political reporting through some fascinating corridors of American history: the exposes of the Revolutionary era, the "unfeeling accuracy" of Congressional reporting, the role of the New York Times and Harper's Weekly in attacking New York City's infamous Tweed Ring, and the emergence of "muckraking" at the beginning of our century. The increasing power of the press in the political arena has been a double-edged sword, Leonard argues. He shows that while political reporting nurtured the broad interest in politics that made democracy possible, this journalism became a threat to political participation.
- Volume
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pbk. ISBN 9780195051841
Description
Many books have argued that journalists have political power: The power of the Press is the first to give a detailed account of how they attained it. Thomas C. Leonard traces the development of news into political commentary from the American Revolution, through the nineteenth century, when newspapers first became aware of their role in a new democracy, to the emergence of `muckraking' in the twentieth century. Leonard argues that the power of the press in the political arena has proved a double edged sword, both dispensing the information and comment which makes democracy possible, and stifling the democratic process through biased and selective reporting. Readership: students of American history, journalism and politics.
by "Nielsen BookData"