Competing Information in a Free Press

Standard 7.2: Competing Information in a Free Press

Give examples of how a free press can provide competing information and views about government and politics. (Massachusetts Curriculum Framework for History and Social Studies) [8.T7.2]

FOCUS QUESTION: How Does a Free Press Provide Competing Information about Government and Politics?

Standard 2 looks at how a free press provides information about government and politics to people, both historically and in today's digital age. In many countries around the world, the press is not free and people receive one side only of a story about a topic or issue—the side the government wants published. A free press, by contrast, presents topics so people get wide-ranging and informed perspectives from which they can make up their own minds about what candidates and policies to support (explore the site AllSides to see how news is presented differently depending on the platform). 

Central to free press is the role of investigative journalism that involves the “systematic, in-depth, and original research and reporting,” often including the “unearthing of secrets” (Investigative Journalism: Defining the Craft, Global Investigative Journalism Network).

1. INVESTIGATE: History of Newspapers, Then and Now

Historians cite Ancient Rome's Acta Diurna (Latin for daily proceedings or public acts and records) as the first newspaper. Carved on stone or metal and posted in public places, these publications shared the news of legal proceedings and court decisions as well as births, deaths, and marriages. Modern newspapers follow from Gutenberg's invention of the printing press in the early 1600s. Go here for an overview and learning plan on the History of Newspapers from the University of Minnesota Libraries.

More than a century ago, the newspaper was how people in the United States learned about what was happening in the world. It was the social media of the time. In 1900, more than 20,000 different newspapers were published in this country; 40 papers had over 100,000 readers. The viewpoints of these papers reflected different political parties and political philosophies, were published in many different languages besides English, and were written for both general and specialized audiences (Breaking the News in 1900, TeachingHistory.org). As historian Jill Lepore (2019, p. 19) noted, “The press was partisan, readers were voters and the news was meant to persuade.”

Changing Outlets for the News

The 21st century has seen a dramatic decline in print newspapers. In 2000, daily print newspapers had an estimated daily circulation of 55.8 million; by 2020, that circulation was down to 24.2 million (U.S. Census Bureau, June 7, 2022).

Today's Front Pages offer current views from 500+ newspapers worldwide. You can access 200 years of primary source newspapers at the Library of Congress Chronciling America site to find papers from 1777 to 1963..

Instead of newspapers, readers and viewers now turn to many different kinds of television and digital news outlets: TV cable and broadcast news, YouTube, Apple News, Twitter, podcasts, digital magazines, blogs, and more.

In Merchants of Truth, her study of the recent history of four major news outlets (BuzzFeed, Vice, The Washington Post, and The New York Times), journalist Jill Abramson (2019) detailed how print newspapers, the "guardians of truth" of times past, became caught in financial crisis at a time when disinformation was becoming very easy to share online. News, Abramson (2019, p. 4) wrote, "had become ubiquitous in the digital age, but it was harder than ever to find trustworthy information or a financial model that would support it." In today's media world, Abramson (2019, p.10) wonders what type of organization will bring "quality news" -- what she defines as "original reporting, digging in to find the real story behind the story" -- to people who are less likely to read print newspapers and more likely to encounter fake and false information online.

News Deserts and the Decline of Local Newspapers

While online and television news expands, a Brookings Institution researcher concluded that more than 65 million Americans live in what can be called “news deserts”—counties with only one or no local newspapers (visit Local Journalism in Crisis for a map of local newspapers in the United States). The Washington Post has reported that as of 2020, a quarter of U.S. local newspapers (some 2,200 papers) have ceased publishing. You can view the 2021 status of local newspapers with this interactive map (The Lost Local News Issue, November 30, 2021).

The decline of local newspapers has been happening for decades. Between 1970 and 2016, more than 500 daily newspapers went out of business, and in 2016, one-third of the nation’s remaining newspapers reported laying off employees (Lepore, 2019). That same year, in 2016, Google made four times the advertising revenue of the entire American newspaper industry combined (Lemann, 2020, p. 39).  A 2018 study found that just 2% of American teenagers read a print newspaper regularly—the report was subtitled “the rise of digital media, the decline of TV, and the (near) demise of print” (Trends in U.S. Adolescents’ Media Use, 1976-2016).

Sources of Political News

Broadcast news outlets have become the main source of political and education news for most Americans with Fox News (16%) and CNN (12%) being the most frequently named sources. News viewing has also become more intensely partisan politically. An overwhelming number of Republican or Republican-leaning adults named Fox News as their main source of political news; Democrats and Democrat-leaning adults named MSNBC as their main source (Pew Research Center, April 1, 2020).

An added complexity are the ways that TV news outlets cover political news. Analyzing the frequency on which members of Congress appear on cable and broadcast news, researchers found that the most airtime goes to those with the most extreme views (Journalist's Resource, January 17, 2021). While extreme viewpoints may drive ratings for news programs, such bias in coverage contributes to political polarization, dislike of opposing viewpoints, and distrust in institutions of government.

All these developments raise a fundamental question: How is the decline of print newspapers and the rise of digital media changing the roles of the press in our society?

Online Resources about Newspapers

• Lesson and Unit Plans
  • Unit B: Become a Journalist, HIGH FIVE: Integrated Language Arts and Journalism Curriculum for Middle School Students 
  • Analyze a News Story, Flocabulary (teaches students about the inverted pyramid of newspaper story writing)

• Participate in "History Unfolded" Project
  • History Unfolded: U.S. Newspapers and the Holocaust, a project of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. asks students, teachers, and history buffs what was possible for Americans to have known about the Holocaust as it was happening and how Americans responded.
  • Participants look in local newspapers for news and opinion about 38 different Holocaust-era events that took place in the United States and Europe, and submit articles they find to a national database, as well as information about newspapers that did not cover events.

2. UNCOVER: Investigative Journalists and Whistleblowers: Nellie Bly, Ida Tarbell, Ida B. Wells, Upton Sinclair, Rachel Carson, and Modern Examples

Investigative journalism is one of the ways that a free press provides truthful information to people. Investigative journalism “involves exposing to the public matters that are concealed–either deliberately by someone in a position of power, or accidentally, behind a chaotic mass of facts and circumstances that obscure understanding. It requires using both secret and open sources and documents” (Mark Lee Hunter as cited in UNESCO, 2015, para. 1). 

The United States has a history of courageous investigative journalists willing to “speak truth to power” by informing the public of intolerable conditions and corrupt practices by citizens and companies. 

• Ida Tarbell, journalist and muckraker who wrote in 1904 about the monopolistic practices of John D. Rockefeller and the Standard Oil Company;
• Nellie Bly, a journalist who in the late 1880s and 1890s documented the plight of working girls in factories, the everyday lives of Mexican people, and life within New York's mental institutions where she went undercover to expose the corruption and mistreatment of the inmates;
• Ida B. Wells was a Black woman activist and journalist who became an activist, journalist and anti-lynching crusader and one of the most important civil rights pioneers of the early 20th century.
• Upton Sinclair who documented horrible sanitary health practices in Chicago’s meatpacking facilities at the turn of the 19th century - his book The Jungle was published in 1906;
• Rachel Carson who revealed the widespread unsafe use of pesticides in her book Silent Spring (1962), helping to launch the modern environmental movement.

Recent Examples of Investigative Journalism and Whistleblowers

In recent decades, the work of reporters and writers demonstrate the enormous impacts that investigative journalism can have in society:

• David Halberstam earned a Pulitzer Prize for revealing the lack of truth in U.S. claims of military success during the Vietnam War.
• Seymour Hersh uncovered the 1968 Mỹ Lai Massacre of Vietnamese civilians by American troops.
• Daniel Ellsberg released the Pentagon Papers - top-secret documents about the American War in Vietnam. You can learn more about Ellsberg at the Ellsberg Archive Project.

In recent years, the #MeToo Movement has exposed widespread sexual misconduct toward women by prominent men in business, the media, and government (visit How investigative journalism sparked off the #MeToo movement).  

The Digital Radicals of Wuhan

In early 2020, a group of digital whistleblowers made the world aware of the coronavirus-19 outbreak in China (The Digital Radicals of Wuhan). 

The Pandora Papers

In October 2021, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) released its Pandora Papers report, a massive study of more than 11.9 million financial documents showing how elites around the world secretly hide billions of dollars in offshore accounts to avoid taxes, investigators, and accountability. Offshore accounts are havens for money outside a person's home country.

Those involved included 130 people listed as billionaires, leaders of countries on every continent, and 14 currents heads of state or government, including Jordan King Abdullah II, four African nation presidents, and the Presidents of Ukraine, the Dominican Republic, and Ecuador.

The Facebook Files

Also in October 2021, the Wall Street Journal released the Facebook Files, its investigative report on the social media company's exploitative business practices that emphasized profit over privacy and truth. The report detailed how Facebook engaged in "whitelisting," where high-profile users were exempt from the rules governing everyone else on the platform. The company ignored evidence that Instagram's promotion of ideal body types is harmful to the self-images of teenage girls. Further, Facebook emphasized the publishing of emotionally charged political material, encouraging extremism of the type that contributed to the January 6, 2021 Insurrection at the nation's Capitol.

The reporting by the Wall Street Journal was further supported by whistleblower Frances Haugen, a former Facebook employee, who appeared before a Congressional committee to add details to the story. Watch Haugen's full opening statement at the Senate hearing below. 

Watch on YouTube https://edtechbooks.org/-KTpY

Online Resources for Investigative Journalism and Whistleblowing

• BOOK: Crisis of Conscience: Whistleblowing in a Age of Fraud. Tom Mueller. Atlantic Books, 2021
• Learning plans:
  • The Paradise Papers: A Lesson in Investigative Journalism, a full learning plan from the Pulitzer Center.  The Paradise Papers document the off-shore financial holdings and tax havens of world leaders and politicians. In 2021, this investigation was expanded to the Pandora Papers.
  • The Jungle, Muckrakers, and Teddy Roosevelt
• Additional reading: 
  • 10 Noteworthy Moments in U.S. Investigative Journalism, Brookings (October 20, 2014)
  • Democracy's Watchdog from the Media Literacy Project; includes a learning plan for Ida B. Wells.

3. ENGAGE: How Can Every Citizen Become Their Own Investigative Journalist?

On June 17, 1972 a night-time break-in and burglary occurred at the Democratic National Headquarters in the Watergate Hotel in Washington, D.C. - an event which ended up having immense national and historical significance. The break-in was done by a group of former FBI and CIA agents called the “Plumbers,” all with strong ties to the Republican Party and committed to the re-election of President Richard M. Nixon. The “Plumbers” sought to bug telephones and find political dirt on the Democratic Party.

Labelled the Watergate Break-In, the event was revealed through years of investigative journalism by the press, notably reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein of The Washington Post, and uncovered abuses of power and illegal deeds that led to Richard Nixon’s resignation as President. Nixon is the only man ever to resign the Presidency.

Investigative journalism plays an essential role in a democracy, but the work of investigation is long and difficult. It takes time and money to track down sources, verify facts, and locate the truth. Unlike Watergate, not every case of wrongdoing and corruption is exposed; many times the guilty are never held accountable for their actions. The decline of newspapers, locally and nationally, means there are fewer investigative journalists on the job.

In today's media-driven society, gossip and celebrity journalism often get more attention than investigative journalism. There are numerous television shows, websites, and print magazines devoted to reporting on celebrities and their lifestyles. While the lives of the rich and famous may be interesting, reporting on those individuals generally does not give "people the information they need to make better decisions about their lives and society" (Kovach & Rosenstiel, 2014). 

In their book The Elements of Journalism, journalists Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel declared that every citizen must become their own investigative journalist - constantly evaluating all the news and information they receive from multiple sources for reliability and truth. Certainly everyday people cannot function like newspaper reporters whose full-time job is finding and reporting the news. But everyday people, including students in schools, can be what Kovach and Rosenstiel call "journalist/sense makers" who use the information they get from professional media and print journalists to make their own decisions by separating facts from fictions, knowledge from rumor and truth from propaganda and lies.

Online Resources about Investigative Journalism and Watergate

• Lesson plan: 
  • Watergate and the limits of presidential power, PBS 
• Interactive resource
  • Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein: An Inventory of Their Watergate Papers at the Harry Ransom Center, Harry Ransom Center 
• Additional reading:
  • What Was Watergate? Here are 14 Facts That Explain Everything, thejournal.ie 
  • W. Mark Felt, Watergate Deep Throat, Dies at 95, The New York Times (December 19, 2008)
  • The Watergate Story, Washington Post 
  • What Spielberg's The Post--and our Textbooks--Leave Out, Common Dreams (January 19, 2018)
  • U.S. v. Nixon Supreme Court Case (1974)

Standard 7.2 Conclusion

In this standard, INVESTIGATE summarized the history of newspapers, the current decline of print journalism, and the rise of digital news. UNCOVER presented the histories of prominent late 19th century and mid-20th century investigative journalists - Nellie Bly, Ida Tarbel, Upton Sinclair, and Rachel Carson - each of whom used newspapers to expose corruption in government and improve society. ENGAGE explored the question, Does Every Citizen Need to be Her or His Own Investigative Journalist? starting with the role of the Washington Post newspaper in the Watergate Scandal that led to President Richard Nixon’s resignation in 1974—events that have taken on added relevance against the backdrop of Donald Trump's actions related to Russian interference in the 2016 Presidential election and the 2019-2020 impeachment inquiry over the withholding of military aid to the nation of Ukraine.