Politics and the American Press: The Rise of Objectivity, 1865–1920 - Hardcover

Richard L. Kaplan

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0521621518 ISBN 13: 9780521621519

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2002

Synopsis

Politics and the American Press takes a fresh look at the origins of modern journalism's ideals and political practices. In particular, Richard Kaplan addresses the professional ethic of political independence and objectivity widely adopted by the US press. He shows how this philosophy emerged from a strikingly different ethic of avid formal partisanship in the early twentieth century. The book also provides fresh insights into the economics of journalism and uses business papers and personal letters of publishers to explore the influence of competition, advertising, and an explosion in readership on the market strategies of the press. Kaplan documents the changes in political content of the press by a systematic content analysis of newspaper news and editorials over a span of 55 years. The book concludes by exploring the question of what should be the appropriate political role and professional ethics of journalists in a modern democracy.

About this title

About the Author

Richard Kaplan is Lecturer in the Sociology Department at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His work on media history has received the Catherine Covert Prize for best published article in Mass Communications History (1996). He has published in Journalism History; Media, Culture, and Society; and American Journalism.

Edition details

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 2002
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0521621518
• ISBN 13: 9780521621519
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 234