Conformity in Our Newspapers
KING, LAWRENCE T.
CONFORMITY IN OUR NEWSPAPERS Partisanship, mergers and syndicates are among the factors promoting By Lawrence T. King When Adlai Stevenson, during his campaign, declared that "we are developing a...
...If a person didn't like one paper's news coverage or editorial policies, he could easily switch to a paper that suited him...
...against the police reporter to tone down stories involving certain privileged personalities...
...Revival of a competitive press d la 1900 would seem a partial solution, but this is unlikely...
...For there is little doubt that the present organization of the press acts to promote a disturbing—and potentially dangerous—uniformity...
...The president of the publishers commented: "We were by no means 'one-party.' If the majority were for the successful Presidential candidate, it cannot be denied that the opposition had powerful and able representation...
...As a result, John Cowles predicts that even more papers will fold or merge in the next few years...
...They usually are less inhibited about correcting their errors...
...When an inquiry into campaign bias was later proposed, however, the American Newspaper Publishers Association rejected the suggestion as "sour grapes...
...In Michigan, according to Editor & Publisher, 35 papers backed Eisenhower to one for Stevenson...
...With the advent of the new administration, however, the majority of the press took a different tack toward Washington...
...John Cowles, publisher of the Minneapolis Star and Tribune, points out that "newspapers that don't have local competition are better able to resist the constant pressure to oversensationalize the news...
...It is estimated that Marshall Field lost $14 million in his unsuccessful attempt to enter the New York publishing field...
...In the non-competitive field, however, far more insidious pressures operate than those mentioned by Cowles...
...Nevertheless, these gains were achieved in the face of bitter opposition by large sections of the American press...
...Rival publishers, in many instances, were thus faced with the choice of bankruptcy or combining their operations...
...Without competition, there is a greater opportunity for editors to play the news according to the publisher s likes and dislikes...
...James Gordon Bennett, for example, borrowed $500 to get the New York Herald under way...
...In Governor Stevenson's home state of Illinois, 55 papers, with a circulation of 3.5 million, supported the Republican candidate, while four, with a circulation of 35,420, backed the Democrat...
...But the principle of selective news reporting can be extended to other fields too easily...
...against farm, business and church editors to fill their weekly pages with handouts rather than go out and run down the significant developments in these fields...
...Lawrence T. King is now the president of the Richmond, Virginia chapter of the American Newspaper Guild...
...In many cases, the trend toward fewer newspapers has made for a better-looking product...
...On any story from a foreign capital, therefore, most of the American people can get only the facts that two or three wire-service reporters choose to transmit—and the interpretations placed on those facts by a few dozen national columnists...
...Today, with a population of 160 million, the number of dailies has declined to 1,772...
...against the editorial writer to ignore unpleasant facts about the "team...
...Other pressures are also operating—against the political reporter to accept ready and facile explanations instead of "smoking out" unpleasant facts...
...Since the Republican party is the party of property and business enterprises, where else would a publisher's interest lie...
...He made a success of the venture because, in addition to being an astute businessman, he was a great and uncompromising journalist...
...Initial costs are too prohibitive—and the chances to success too uncertain—to attract anyone with sufficient capital...
...My own daily observations on this matter lead me to the conclusion that much of the daily press is committing a serious crime against its readers—and against the canons of responsible journalism—in showing marked one-sidedness in covering the news of this campaign and in slanting much of the news it does cover...
...Industry, business and agriculture revived, and social reforms like Social Security, wage-and-hour laws and bank insurance gained acceptance in the most conservative quarters...
...Today, outside a few metropolitan areas, newspaper competition has virtually ceased to exist...
...This is a far cry from the time when personal journalism was still a potent force, when editorial conformity was something to be avoided at all costs...
...to resist the pressure for immediacy which makes for incomplete, shoddy and premature reporting...
...News conformity as the result of a narrowing press has manifested itself in still another way...
...Novak's explanation seems to be an oversimplification of the current situation, however, for the press in this country was substantially more two-sided before World War II...
...Ralph B. Novak, Executive Vice President of the American Newspaper Guild, has one explanation: "Despite all the cries on the part of the press that it is a quasi-public institution, it has come more and more to act just what it is: a business enterprise...
...It is now rare to find a two-newspaper American city where both papers are not published by the same corporation...
...What had been creditable alertness in exposing every error of the Truman team to intense public scrutiny became an apologetic vagueness in regard to the pratfalls of the Eisenhower Administration...
...This is disturbing to those who feel the press should reflect to a large extent the aspirations of its readers...
...As recently as 1940, virtually every city and town had organs of conflicting opinion...
...Publishing costs, which soared at a phenomenal rate during the past thirty years, took a terrific toll of marginal newspapers—many of which never attracted mass circulations because they refused to surrender their freedom to support unpopular or unorthodox causes...
...This national reliance on centralized, compact news services and syndicates not only creates uniformity in the press...
...Mergers and combinations became common...
...Costs aside, many newspapers now rely on wire services and columnists to handle certain situations which a local scholar or businessman may be better qualified to interpret...
...But if he was living in any one of nine states during the last Presidential election and didn't like the way papers treated the campaign, his only alternative was to stop reading newspapers altogether...
...During the height of the campaign, Roscoe Drummond noted in the Christian Science Monitor: "The Democratic nominee is getting considerably less than an even break in the news columns of the daily newspapers across the country...
...There is, of course, cause for concern when the dominant forces of economic life, now in control of the Federal machinery, receive the near-unanimous support of the press...
...In those days, publishers were attracted to the field not only as a business but also as a force to influence public opinion for what they considered constructive ends...
...These are important, but, viewed by themselves, they tend to blur greater dangers of uniformity...
...Stevenson was especially concerned about the dangers of political conformity engendered by a "one-party press...
...FDR's program was bold and far-reaching, and it affected almost every facet of American life...
...Without a competing paper to mirror shortcomings, the temptation to succumb to these pressures is often irresistible...
...What is responsible for the steady compression of the national press...
...it robs it of the vitality that was present when scores of people from all sections of the country approached national and international news in the light of their individual backgrounds...
...There is, for instance, the powerful temptation of the non-competitive newspaper to act as the final arbiter of what is good for its readers...
...It is unfortunate that the discussion aroused by the phrase "one-party press" is being limited to the political aspects...
...Economic factors have also had their impact on the larger journals...
...Many papers whose circulation and advertising figures gave an outward impression of prosperity found themselves operating on dangerously thin profit margins...
...At each subsequent national election, the GOP found it necessary to reassure the electorate that there would be no going back...
...In 1910, when the United States had a population of 92 million, the country could count 2,600 newspapers...
...Too many newspapers forego local talent and rely on a few big syndicated columns for interpretative matters...
...CONFORMITY IN OUR NEWSPAPERS Partisanship, mergers and syndicates are among the factors promoting By Lawrence T. King When Adlai Stevenson, during his campaign, declared that "we are developing a one-party press in a two-party country," he brought into the open a disquieting aspect of American life: the tendency of mass media to promote conformity...
...The high costs of present-day journalism have forced many newspapers to rely almost exclusively on the three major news services for national and international coverage...
...With men of his caliber leading the field, the press was often strident, but never uniform...
...On questions of good taste—stories involving sex crimes, divorces and domestic matters—it generally acquits itself admirably...
...The "powerful and able representation" consisted of newspapers with about 10 per cent of the total daily circulation...
...The outlook is not encouraging...
...In the past decade, increases in operating costs have far outstripped gains in revenue...
...They can present the news in better perspective...
...Papers reaching 80 per cent of the total circulation backed General Eisenhower, as did almost all the national magazines which took a stand...
...His ventures in Chicago were almost as costly...
...This trend toward political conformity within the American press is not new, but it has received its greatest impetus since the New Deal...
...In nine states, not a single newspaper supported the Democratic candidate...
...This experience has sobered many a man with similar notions...
...Can mass information media be stimulated to new diversity...
...the circulation lineup was two million to 3,300...
...And that opposition was maintained, even intensified, in the years after serious reform had ceased...
...It seems as if diversity wil have to spring mainly from events and from the conscience of editors, writers and readers...
Vol. 37 • January 1954 • No. 1
