Political Journalism Essay ⋆ Political Science Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

Political journalism reports about domestic politics and institutions. It can include political analysis, opinion, interpretation, and advocacy. From the middle of the first half of the nineteenth century, American newspapers’ partisanship and reliance on opinion were the norm. The papers were numerous, slim, and financed by political parties.

During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the demographic shape of the population changed. Citizens were moving from rural to urban life, as retailing expanded and industry developed. Economic shifts made large numbers of newspapers catering to partisan groups uneconomical. Greater gains came from a strategy of shifting away from party and toward the more inclusive market .As urban newspapers gained wealth, many could detach themselves from party control and back independence among their journalists, who, nonetheless, could be curbed by owners.

With the professionalization of journalists, they specialized on given aspects of politics and society. These assignments would be their beats. The yellow journalism of the mass press and partisan news of the past declined. Professionals aimed for well researched, politically centrist reporting, and investigative or accountability journalism advanced the watchdog role for news.

The advent of electronic media affected political journalism in newspapers. Radio news at first tended to rely on (or even read from) newspaper accounts. When television became the electronic medium of choice, newspapers turned to more second-day or analysis stories and commercial radio tended to reduce news to brief top-of-the-hour headlines. Public radio by the 1980s developed daily programs with extensive political journalism, but popular stations over the next decade advanced a new form of politicized talk show, most often an aggressive, name-calling, partisan vehicle of the political journalist “celebrity,” known for extreme political views.

To compete with the dynamic narratives of electronic media, newspaper journalists attempted to create more striking storytelling, moving away from the straightforward stance in search of “interesting” stories.

In the political and social upheavals of the 1960s and 1970s, public trust in institutions plummeted. Some political journalism adopted the style and content of identity politics in response to the civil rights movement, the women’s movement, and other minorities’ claims. Others did investigations of government malfeasance and crime. What had been a comfortable and mutually rewarding relationship between journalist and government sources broke apart in the new climate. Some political journalists began to write in a critical and emotional style. They claimed that the truth of the turbulence at home and an unpopular war abroad could be conveyed only by a “new” journalism of descriptive equivalence. Journalists disagreed about how objective or engaged political journalism should be. But political journalists at elite newspapers maintained the norms of balance and fairness.

The decline of mass circulation magazines and then the entry of cable television fragmented the audience for political reporting. Considerable research into the public as a multitude of niches can isolate dimensions of preference, so that channels now target niches with precision. Cable channels adjust programming for tastes in news as well as entertainment and provide political journalism of every persuasion. The “big three” U.S. broadcast networks still have a commanding but diminishing lead for their classic news programs. The loud and heated opinion journalists on cable channels are increasing their ratings rapidly.

The Internet makes information available faster and in far greater volume. If the definition of journalist includes the millions of bloggers on the Web, then political journalism has grown astoundingly. Bloggers are a disparate group, many or most of whom use unidentified sources and rely on opinions. Some provide on-the-spot pictures and observations if they happen to witness catastrophes, police violence, and mass political events.

Political journalism in elite newspapers and magazines continues, but the companies are in declining economic health. Surveys show that for the television public the line separating news from political comedy satires and entertainment magazine shows has become indistinguishable. The high-voltage extremist political journalists are further blurring the distinction.

Bibliography:

Buchanan, Bruce. Renewing Presidential Politics: Campaigns, Media, and the Public Interest. Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1996.
Entman, Robert M. Democracy without Citizens: Media and the Decay of American Politics. New York: Oxford University Press, 1989.
Iyengar, Shanto, and Jennifer Grady. Media Politics: A Citizen’s Guide. New York: Norton, 2007.
Jamieson, Kathleen Hall, and Joseph N. Capella. Echo Chamber: Rush Limbaugh and the Conservative Media Establishment. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008.
Schudson, Michael. Discovering the News: A Social History of American Newspapers. New York: Basic Books, 1981.

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