Style gettting in the way of clear reporting

[jim bell]

At 06:38 PM 7/7/96 -0700, Timothy C. May wrote:
>At 12:40 AM 7/8/96, James A. Donald wrote:
>
>>When news media were concentrated into fewer and fewer hands during
>>the twentieth century, the appearance of neutrality, objectivity,
>>and authoritativeness became a major selling point, and so media
>>adopted a tone and manner of neutrality, with an accompanying
>>"just-the-facts" style, though in reality they became far less neutral
>
>An interesting point. You are probably right that journalism is becoming
>more florid as "amateurs" flood the market. However, I don't quite buy the
>concentration argument, as things were pretty concentrated in the Hearst
>era, and the explosion of magazines in the past few decades has not been as
>concentrated. (In any case, these are hard things to quantify without more
>research, which I for one am unlikely to pursue.)

It is probably true that journalism was more concentrated in the late 1800's 
and early 1900's, since it consisted of a few newspapers.  However, I think 
a good argument could be made that because government was dramatically 
smaller than today, that concentration was not nearly as detrimental as it 
would be today under similar circumstances.


Jim Bell
jimbell at pacifier.com