Press Professionalization and Propaganda: The Rise of Journalisti ...

from the public relations materials of privileged concerns. One has to wonder how often journalists, especially those of newspapers, have stopped to consider how these materials have long worked to frame the news so as to represent the perspectives of elite actors. As this book shows, the press became acclimated to propaganda as news before World War II. Such a fundamental dynamic would appear to have a bearing on the public’s growing disenchantment with the traditional press and the quality of its offerings. David Simon, producer of HBO’s “The Wire” and a formerBaltimore Sun reporter, lamented that too many observers were unwilling to examine how the newspaper’s own professional culture helped contribute to its increasing irrelevance. He said,

Simon’s observations point to journalism’s failure to grapple with the dire results of its rote implementation of professionalism. However, as the traditional press finds its relevance in jeopardy, instead of reflection, it often lunges toward purely structural answers. As Simon aptly points out, recent fallouts due to journalism’s maladaptive business models and the rising threats of new technology are not the only drivers of the traditional press’ troublesome situation. In fact, historical evidence points toward decades-long public disaffection with the press. In 2005 the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism reported that the average total daily weekday circulation for newspapers had already peaked by the early 1970s and thereafter began a gradual decline.¹⁹ In addition, before the rise ofthe Internet as a news source, a 1994 poll by the Times-Mirror Centerfor the People and the Press found that 71 percent of Americans believed that “the news media gets in the way of society solving its problems.”²⁰