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Reforming the Fourth Estate |
| Section: CURRENT ISSUES / MEDIA IN REVIEW |
| Author: Dirk Smillie |
| Publication:
The World & I Online |
| Issue Date: 4/1/2003 |
| Size: 2,044 Words, 13,429 Characters |
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Henry David Thoreau once had a few choice words for the broadsheets of his day. "I am sure that I never read any memorable news in a newspaper," he wrote. If readers learn of "one steamboat blown up, or one cow run over on the Western Railroad, or one mad dog killed, or one lot of grasshoppers in the winter--we never need read another. One is enough. If you are acquainted with the principle, what do you care for a myriad instances and applications?"
Front-page excess has always piqued powerful critics. Why, then, does journalism yield so spotty a record when it comes to reforming itself--especially considering the institutional reforms that media muckraking has exacted on other American institutions? Ida Tarbell's turn-of-the-century exposé on Standard Oil led to a strengthening of antitrust laws. Lincoln Steffens' Shame of the Cities helped clean up city government. Woodward and Bernstein brought down a lawbreaking president.
It's not that reporters are unconcerned with their own lot. Since the birth of the mass-circulation press a century ago, many of the key complaints about journalism--tabloid sensationalism, editorial bias, and invasion of privacy--have come from writers and journalists themselves.
Press critics brought about incremental reform through their criticism, which often grew from other traditions....
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...ip. Another venture, NewsLab, in Washington, D.C., is another, relatively new nonprofit group that analyzes ways that TV stations can improve their reporting.
To be sure, reformers of the fourth estate have had some modest victories, thanks to the think tanks, media critics, and muckrakers among them. But to this day, journalism continued to be more responsive to its consumers than its critics.
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Publication Details
(The World & I Online) |
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The World & I Online is a
comprehensive academic resource that encompasses a broad range of
articles by scholars and experts in the areas of Global Studies,
Liberal Arts, Fine & Applied Arts, General Science, and Spanish.
Originally published monthly in print as The World & I, our site
includes the complete contents since 1986 and continues to publish
a new issue online each month. |
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