Political media today 235and failures. Many newspapers chronicled the conflicts of the Revolutionary War;
after the war, while politicians negotiated over the size and scope of the new federal
government, newspapers became a venue for debates over different plans.^3 While
the media cover politics, politicians have always tried to shape this coverage to their
advantage. During the ratification of the Constitution, for instance, Alexander
Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison supported pro-ratification forces in New
York by publishing (under a pseudonym) a series of articles that came to be known as
the Federalist Papers in local newspapers.^4 And in 1798 Congress and President John
Adams enacted the Alien and Sedition Acts, which made it a crime to publish articles
that criticized the president or Congress.^5 While these press restrictions were later
repealed or allowed to expire, they serve as a reminder that the American media have
never been free of government regulation or of the conflictual relationship between
politicians and reporters.
Long before the Internet, changes in technology expanded the media’s role as
information provider, entertainment, and watchdog. In 1833, the New York Sun
began selling papers for a penny a copy rather than the standard price of six cents.
The price reduction, which was facilitated by cheaper, faster printing presses, made
the newspaper available to the mass public for the first time, and this increase in
circulation made it possible, even with the lower price, to hire larger staffs of reporters.^6
The development of the telegraph also aided newspapers by enabling reporters on
assignment throughout the country to quickly send stories back home for publication.
Many of the new publications were unabashedly partisan. For example, the New York
Tribune was strongly antislavery. By 1860, the Tribune’s circulation was larger than
that of any other newspaper in the world and its articles “helped to add fuel to the fires
of slavery and sectionalism that divided North and South.”^7 At the other extreme, the
New York Times was transformed in the 1800s into a nonpartisan paper with the goals of
journalistic impartiality, accuracy, and complete coverage of events—its motto to the
present day is “All the News That’s Fit to Print.”^8
The media’s role as a watchdog has always been constrained by the need to attract
a paying audience in order to stay in business and turn a profit. The period after the
Civil War saw the beginning of yellow journalism, reporting that drew in customers
by using bold headlines, illustrations, and sensational stories (the name came from
the yellow paper these newspapers were printed on). And during the 1920s hundreds
of small, local radio stations appeared, along with some larger stations that could
broadcast nationwide. The proliferation of stations eventually led to the development
of networks, that is, groups of local radio (and, later, television) stations owned by
one company that broadcast a common set of programs. While these new electronic
sources made more information available to Americans, many of them were developed
not as watchdogs but as highly profitable enterprises that delivered entertainment as
well as news to citizens and monetized their audience by selling radio or television time
to advertisers.^9Regulating the Media Until 1930 or so, there was only minimal federal regulation
of the media, reflecting the Constitution’s guarantee of freedom of the press—and
the fact that newspapers were the only media source that existed. With the rise of the
broadcast media, including radio and television, and the formation of the Federal
Communications Commission (FCC) to allocate broadcast frequencies, a new position
emerged: if broadcasters were going to make money off their use of a scarce resource,
the government could place conditions on how this business operated. In recent years,
new technologies (cable TV, the Internet) have changed the calculation; the emphasis
is now on encouraging competition among media sources rather than regulating a
few providers.Yellow journalism emphasized
sensational stories and bold headlines,
but also made information about
contemporary politics available to a
wider audience.yellow journalism
A style of newspaper reporting
popular in the late 1800s that
featured sensationalized stories,
bold headlines, and illustrations to
increase readership.broadcast media
Communications technologies, such
as television and radio, that transmit
information over airwaves.Federal Communications
Commission (FCC)
A government agency created in 1934
to regulate American radio stations
and later expanded to regulate
television, wireless communications
technologies, and other broadcast
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