Bad NewsSeptember/October 2019 205
Pressman argues that American
journalism reached this zenith in
reaction to its fundamental failure during
the Red Scare o the 1950s. During that
time, conventions o objectivity led
newspapers to amplify Senator Joseph
McCarthy’s accusations and smears, lest
they be seen as editorializing. The
self-examination that followed McCar-
thy’s downfall—combined with the new
competitive threat from television, the
medium that had done the most to
expose McCarthy—pushed newspapers
away from just-the-facts recitations and
toward providing more context, expla-
nation, and interpretation. Still, well
into the 1960s, Pressman shows, news
coverage tended to be bland and deferen-
tial to government. It was the U.S.
government’s lies about Vietnam, as well
as personal opposition to the war on
the part o many journalists, that bred
the adversarial style o contemporary
political journalism. As Pressman
writes, Vietnam “established a baseline
level o antagonism between the press
and the government.”
But journalistic distrust o authority
boomeranged: the press soon found
itsel on the receiving end, losing the
almost automatic trust it had enjoyed
when its stance had been less challeng-
ing. The right criticized the mainstream
press for adopting an oppositional
relationship to established institutions.
The left criticized the press because it
had become an establishment institution.
Vice President Spiro Agnew’s attack on
the media’s left-wing bias presaged
Trump’s. In terms that now seem rather
mild, Agnew accused the press o
departing from its obligation to simply
report the facts and said that by doing
so it was taking sides in political conÇictsThey are also under more or less constant
assault from social media trolls, people
who believe what they hear on Fox News,
and the president o the United States.
But I repeat myself.
Following Donald Trump’s election in
2016, a few news organizations with
international reach—especially the Post
and the Times—began exhibiting signs o
a return to health. Outrageous abuse has
provoked support. But local news seems
unlikely to recover, and globally, there are
few positive trends. In countries where a
free press was just beginning to emerge,
a cocktail o rising authoritarianism,
audience cannibalization by social media,
and ¿nancial weakness has thrown it
into reverse. Independent journalism is
viable in some places, but not overall.
Everywhere, the same question about the
future o news crops up: How can demo-
cratic societies get the journalism they
need in order to function?
THE GOOD OLD DAYS
A good way to start answering that
question is to look at the period when the
U.S. media business was at its healthiest.
In On Press, the journalism historian
Matthew Pressman examines The New
York Times and the Los Angeles Times
between 1960 and 1980. During this
seeming golden age, the leading news
organizations adjusted their fundamental
relationship to government, shifting
from a kind o elevated stenography to
the critical journalism that has become
the norm. This was the era o the
Vietnam War, the Pentagon Papers, and
All the President’s Men, when the image
o the reporter as a truth-seeking hero
took hold and investigative reporting
units proliferated at local newspapers and
¡¥ stations all over the country.