The concept of a reliable, information-based press emerged quite late in America's evolution.

As the press became more of a mass medium in the mid-19th century, it shed its preponderant role as a tool of the political elite. Technology had conspired with the growth of American cities and the industrial revolution to usher in what became known as the "penny press," a product that was affordable by and of interest to a broad section of the population. It was a wild, competitive and intensely personal press, fostering both sensationalism and crusades on behalf of the common citizen or newspaper buyer. Papers sprang up like mushrooms, circulation rose, and owners got rich.

In the midst of all this frenzy, the American press began to see some value in straight information. The word "objectivity" joined the lexicon. This development was caused primarily by business motives and technological change. During America's Civil War, publishers and editors came to realize that the reading public first wanted to know what was happening on the battlefield and in the corridors of power, not just what some correspondent felt about it. At about the same time, the telegraph appeared, but its use required something foreign to the press of that day -- brevity. To be brief meant to stick to the facts.

This new technology also greatly enhanced the emergence and importance of a new creature called the "wire services," now known familiarly as news agencies. Organizations like the Associated Press (AP) were formed to act as centralized gatherers and disseminators of the news, serving newspapers that could not afford to have correspondents in far-away places. In order to serve a variety of different publications (on the left, right and center), the AP could take no political or ideological position. It just delivered the facts as best and fast as it could, and stayed out of politics.

What started as a business necessity gradually took on the mantle of moral righteousness. But business still pulled the strings. By the 1950s, screaming headlines were no longer needed to sell newspapers. Americans were headed out to the suburbs, where a paper, magazine, radio and television became part of the monthly bill. Credibility was becoming a necessity. You couldn't reach mass audiences in a multicultural society by adhering to a rigid ideology or by fabricating the news. Competition remained fierce and money continued to pour into the press coffers; and to protect this new bastion of integrity, walls were erected to keep business and political interests out of the newsroom. The readers could see this change for themselves, as papers strictly segregated opinion and news on separate pages. The broadcast industry (which is partially regulated by government in the United States) followed the print media's lead to a limited degree.

Once poorly paid, reporters now started earning higher salaries, becoming full-fledged members of the middle class. In return, they gave up their traditional entitlements -- the payoffs, moonlighting jobs, free meals and free tickets -- that conflicted with their new role as pristine communicators. They adopted "codes of conduct" and spoke unashamedly of serving the public with integrity.

They still launched crusades to right injustices, and even stepped up that effort with "investigative teams" who, unlike their predecessors in the wild turn-of-the-century period, painstakingly researched their subject. Every fact had to be sought out, checked and double-checked -- not just because it was the right thing to do, but because they didn't want to lose a libel suit in court.

Traditionalists regard this as a "golden age" of the American press, which lasted for about three decades until the early 1980s. It reached its zenith when journalists exposed the Watergate scandal that toppled a president.

The last chapter on fact-based journalism has not yet been written, and perhaps never will be. But the pendulum has clearly swung back to a more personalized, engaged and consumer- oriented journalism in America. Its proponents say this is merely a reflection of American reality, and the old tools don't work so well any more. Its critics say the more honest reason is that objectivity alone doesn't sell any longer.

Whatever the reasons, the impact on public discourse and decision-making is not incidental.

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Issues of Democracy
USIA Electronic Journal, Vol. 2, No. 1, February 1997