The media and politics 183Newspapers
In a country the size of the United States, newspapers were inevitably lo-
cal in origin, most of them founded before the development of the technol-
ogy which now makes it possible to reach readers thousands of miles from
the point of origin. Newspapers were centred on cities and towns across the
country, founded as the growth of settlement opened up new areas. Even
today, although there are over 1,400 daily newspapers, there are few national
newspapers in the sense in which there are national newspapers in (much
smaller) European countries, such as Britain. The New York Times and the
Washington Post, with the status of national institutions, are still not available
for sale in newsagents or supermarkets in many small towns, although they
are now accessible daily on the internet, along with many other newspapers.
The only newspaper readily available almost everywhere is USA Today, useful
but without the extensive coverage of the great traditional dailies. Although
many newspapers were founded by individuals who ran them as personal fief-
doms, today the majority of daily newspapers are owned by large corporate
chains. Alongside the newspapers, weekly magazines such as Time and News-
week have considerable influence, with large circulations, and for the political
and business elite there are a number of specialist news magazines, such as
U.S. News and World Report, National Review or New Republic.
The news media show the same pattern as the general characteristics of
American society – initial high decentralisation, followed by increasing na-
tionalisation and the increasing influence of ‘big business’. At their height
newspapers had considerable influence on the course of American politics,
and in some cases decisive influence. It was the investigatory journalism of
Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein of the Washington Post that revealed the
scandal of Watergate, and led eventually to the resignation of Richard Nixon.
However, with the rise of television and the internet the relative influence of
the press declined.
Radio
The first commercial radio station in the United States was established in
Pittsburgh in November 1920 and began broadcasting with a report of the
election results of the presidential election of that year. The development of
broadcasting was rapid, with hundreds of stations being established in the
1920s; in 2005 there were over 10,000 commercial radio stations. Congress
passed the Radio Act of 1927 to introduce order into the system by allocat-
ing wavelengths; the Federal Communications Commission was set up by
the Communications Act of 1934 for that purpose. Although radio stations
were established as independent businesses, and still are, networking soon
became desirable so that news programmes, commentaries and some enter-
tainment and sports programmes could be generated by the network and
distributed to affiliated stations across the country. Four large networks were