the influence of print media on american politics
DESCRIPTION
Many examples of the print media acting as a medium of influence on public attitudes and government policy can be drawn from the rich wellspring of its history in America. This brief essay will discuss three such examples: The Stamp Act of 1765 and ensuing revolution, the ratification of the United States Constitution and its first ten amendments, and the period immediately before the rapid escalation that lead to the Spanish-American war of 1898. All three events illustrated a consistent focus on politics as the dominant framework of print media in the 18th and 19th centuries.TRANSCRIPT
Preston Edmands Paper 5 – Referential Classification
English Comp 1301 April 11, 2011
Section 075 Final Draft
“The Influence of Print Media On American Politics”
Many examples of the print media acting as a medium of influence on public
attitudes and government policy can be drawn from the rich wellspring of its history in
America. This brief essay will discuss three such examples: The Stamp Act of 1765 and
ensuing revolution, the ratification of the United States Constitution and its first ten
amendments, and the period immediately before the rapid escalation that lead to the
Spanish-American war of 1898. All three events illustrated a consistent focus on politics
as the dominant framework of print media in the 18th and 19th centuries.
In 1765, two years after colonial victory of the French and Indian war, Britain
continued to be burdened with substantive debt from aiding the American effort and
fighting both France and Spain on several Atlantic shores. Britain alleviated some of the
debt by shifting it onto the shoulders of the colonists. Through navigation acts that
brutally enforced import taxes, Parliament enacted legislation that “transformed the
thirteen colonies, all but one having been founded on entrepreneurial enterprise, into a
source of revenue for the Royal Monarchy” (Kennedy 43). Americans already boxed in
by the Proclamation of 1763, an act that prohibited colonial expansion into virgin
territories west of the Appalachians, became furious when Parliament signed The Stamp
Act of 1765 into law. The act mandated “the use of stamped papers or the affixing of
stamps certifying payment of tax on over fifty printed goods, including pamphlets and
newspapers” (“Newspapers in the 18th Century”).
Economically stunting, The Stamp Act gravely threatened the financial viability
of colonial American printing presses and caused a larger number of their operators (or
printers, in colloquial terms) to resist the tax on behalf of and through print media. They
issued local reports of protest, which were circulated throughout the thirteen colonies,
inviting their readers to witness the country’s restive spirit. By doing so, these printers
“became allied with rebels hoping to inflame anti-British sentiment, who would use these
so-called ‘newsletters’ to politically educate civilians wherever Britain failed to maintain
a sufficient military presence” (“Newspapers in the 18th Century”). Printers wanted to
secure their ‘freedom of the press’ as much as political rebels wanted to protect their
colonial government and its citizens from persecution by British Parliament (“History of
American newspapers”). United in protecting their beloved presses from bankruptcy,
these printers joined the rebels in the fight against British Imperialism.
Rebel printers helped form the Committees of Correspondence, which exchanged
ideas on republicanism, circulated seditious papers that argued for independence, and
coordinated colonial petitions to be submitted before the Crown (“Committees of
Correspondence”). The Committees rallied for revolutionary causes and established plans
for collective action, quickly refining their organization into a communications network
greatly enhanced by the speed with which the press could print political pamphlets and
colonial newspapers. The press allowed committee members to inform readers both
within the colonies and abroad of mounting opposition to the taxes. The disaffection of
Britain was all of America’s to read and interpret. The printing of such propaganda was
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almost as old as the press itself, but newspaper editors set a precedent that continues to
this day when, in their dedicated passion for independence, they presented reports biased
in its favor.
In April of 1775, the colonies reached a tipping point. A British attempt to arrest
Samuel Adams and John Hancock, two members of the revolutionary effort who were
residing in Boston, twisted into the bloody battles at Lexington and Concord. During the
resulting American Revolution, printers and newspaper editors became further divided
along contentious political lines into two colonial factions.
Patriots (also known as American Whigs, Revolutionaries, Congress-Men or
Rebels) were the names of colonists who had rebelled against British control during the
American Revolution. It was their leading figures who, in July 1776, declared the United
States of America an independent nation. Their rebellion was based on the political
philosophy of republicanism, as expressed by pamphleteers, such as Thomas Jefferson,
Alexander Hamilton, and Thomas Paine.
Loyalists believed resistance to the Crown—the legitimate government of the
colonies—was morally wrong. They were alienated when the Patriots resorted to
violence, such as burning houses and tarring and feathering. Loyalists wanted to take a
middle-of-the road position and were reluctantly pushed by the Patriots to declare
opposition. The editors within this minority chose to ignore all news of anti-British
protest and rabble-rousing, attempting to counteract the revolutionary fervor of the
Patriots with the feeble stubbornness of silence. These editors quietly asserted highly
unpopular opinions in a climate hostile to their apathy and were widely condemned in the
colonies.
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Editorializing, now understood to be an important tool of informing public
attitudes, became both a weapon to destroy the opposition and a threat when found in
enemy hands. Radical groups of Patriots like the Sons of Liberty prevented Loyalist
editors from printing British news and opinion, kept them from slanting colonial reports
in favor of the British war effort, and roughed up Loyalist printers for sympathizing with
the deplorable British Empire.
The Revolutionary War ended in 1783 with the signing of the Treaty of Paris, in
which Britain formally recognized independence of the United States. As the fledgling
American nation struggled towards a viable form of sovereignty, its newspapers took on
an even greater role in shaping public opinion, and “something approximating a national
conversation emerged” (Postman 31).
The Federalist Papers, an out-pouring of eighty-five essays written by Alexander
Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay—all under the name of Publius—originally
appeared in a New York newspaper during 1787 – 1788 and were read almost as widely
in the South as the North. The essays outlined a lucid and compelling version of the
philosophy and motivation of the proposed Constitution, which was to act as the guiding
political document of the United States government. The authors of the essays wanted
both to “influence the vote in favor of ratification and to shape future interpretations of
the Constitution” (Postman 37). After a short period of governance under the Articles of
Confederation, the people of the United States adopted the Constitution on September 17,
1787.
The press had been central in gathering public support for the new Constitution.
For this reason, the founding fathers of America—many of them Patriots during the
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revolution—understood the need to protect freedom of the press to publish any and all
materials it desired. Though the Constitution was a reasonably sound document, the
founding fathers saw that an opportunist with the ability could exploit various loopholes
that remained in the Constitution and turn the democracy into a much more oppressive
regime. They decided to further “define certain liberties and clarify their absolute
protection from tyranny by proceeding to amend the Constitution with the Bill of Rights”
(Kennedy 58).
The Bill of Rights, enacted in 1791, consists of the first ten Constitutional
Amendments. The First Amendment states “Congress shall make no law… abridging the
freedom of speech, or of the press.” This encouraged newspapers to become prominent
record keepers and guardians of true political transparency, but also allowed “plenty of
room for them to become mouthpieces for the political opinion of Editors” (Postman 28).
Rather than merely reporting on biased news, editors began directly stating their own
political opinions in their papers, rather than relying on more objective reporting. By the
close of the eighteenth century, editors had become “actively involved in forming the
political system of the United States” (“Newspapers in the 18th Century”).
In the golden age of print media that fell between 1890 and 1920, Editors Joseph
Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst both owned gargantuan newspaper empires that
competed with each other for readership in New York City and throughout the country.
Their competitive practices included raiding each other’s staff and refining a brand of
reporting known as yellow journalism, a type of journalism that “presents little or no
legitimate, well-researched news and instead uses eye-catching headlines to sell more
newspapers” (“Newspapers in the 20th Century”). Yellow journalism includes
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exaggerations of news events, scandal mongering, and sensationalism. According to Neil
Postman, it was these sorts of techniques Hearst used to increase sales, which lead to the
Spanish-American War of 1898 (52).
In 1898 the USS Maine inexplicably sank off the coast of Cuba after its hull was
severely damaged by a mysterious explosion. An investigation by the United States
declared a naval mine caused the explosion, while Spanish officials insisted it wasn’t an
act of war but rather a cache of gunpowder that had ignited within the ship itself. Hearst
and Pulitzer, in their frantic bid to increase the readership of their newspapers, used the
crisis to whip up national fervor for war. When his foreign correspondent Frederic
Remington assured him that conditions in Cuba were not dire enough to warrant
hostilities, Hearst responded that if Frederic would simply “furnish the pictures,” he
would “furnish the war.” This bold-faced declaration of the extent to which his
newspaper could influence political was hardly an exaggeration. Headlines such as
“Remember the Maine!” and “to hell with Spain” appeared regularly, and both Hearst
and Pulitzer’s papers vilified the Spanish and their treatment of Cubans. In April of 1898,
two months after the sinking of the USS Maine, Washington formally declared war. The
Spanish-American War lasted only ten weeks, the outcome being the 1898 Treaty of
Paris. The treaty granted the United States several island possessions spanning the globe,
and generated a “rancorous new debate over the wisdom of imperialism” (“Newspapers
in the 20th Century”).
In conclusion, the preceding three moments from America’s history not only
serve as examples of the varying relations between America and foreign powers, but also
represent the important role print media has played in shaping significant, contemporary
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events. By circulating a wealth of information and text, made possible with the invention
of the hand-operated press, printers and editors gave the general public access to these
events, many happening in distant and unfamiliar places around the world.
It is hard to measure the full extent to which print media has shaped and been
shaped by the opinions of its editors and readers alike. What is clear is that print media
has powerful effects on public attitudes and has in it the potential to be abused by those
who control it. Its primary focus on politics that evolved out of colonial America, along
with the oft-strong political leanings of its editors, combine to make print media a force
for influence on public opinion and, consequently, government action.
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Works Cited
"Committees of Correspondence." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The
Free Encyclopedia, 24 Mar. 2011. Web. 3 Apr. 2011.
"History of American newspapers." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The
Free Encyclopedia, 2 Apr. 2011. Web. 4 Apr. 2011.
Kennedy, David M., Lizabeth Cohen, Thomas Bailey, and Mel Piehl. The Brief
American Pageant. 6th ed. Vol. 1. Belmont, California: Wadsworth, 2003. Print.
“Newspapers in the 18th Century.” History of the mass media in the United States: An
Encyclopedia. Ed. Margaret A. Blanchard. Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn, 1998.
Print.
“Newspapers in the 20th Century.” History of the mass media in the United States: An
Encyclopedia. Ed. Margaret A. Blanchard. Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn, 1998.
Print.
Postman, Neil. Amusing Ourselves to Death. Harrisonburg, Virginia: Viking Penguin
Inc., 1985. Print.
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