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

make informed decisions within our democracy. As former newspaper editor Davis “Buzz” Merritt said, in a representative democracy, Americans do not give away ultimate power; instead, the public lends it to elected officials. “The only way for people to retain their ultimate power is by being engaged in its exercise,” he said, and journalism provides the vehicle through which the public can build the capacity to fruitfully interact with their representatives.¹ Accurate, pertinent information through the media is vital to the sound working of this equation. “The best journalism is the most efficient because it relies most heavily on what is essential and leaves out what is not,” said Kovach and Rosenstiel. It tells people what is “true and reliable,” they said. They added, in an admonishing tone, that the public values most journalism that refuses to mix news and propaganda.² Ten years after their observations, a late 2009 Pew Research survey found that a majority of Americans (71 percent) still relied on broadcast TV news for international and national news, and a plurality (41 percent) counted on print newspapers for local news. At the same time, their warning about the press’ ability to alienate news consumers proved prescient. The same Pew survey revealed that citizens had significant qualms about the reliability of the news they were receiving, with 63 percent of Americans saying that news stories are often incorrect—an increase of almost 100 percent since a similar survey by Pew in 1985.³ One scholar tracked this public concern about the press’ credibility and discovered that, from 1997 onward (with the exception of right after the 9/11 attacks) no less than 56 percent of Americans found that news reporting suffers from inaccuracies.⁴ He noted that the public sees the mainstream media as too close to government, “too assimilated into corporate America to fairly report the news,” and too influenced by powerful interests. The public, he said, questions how the news media could possibly provide independent reporting of the day’s events.⁵

So, while Americans still have an expectation that the traditional press should be providing credible accounts of the day’s happenings, they are also increasingly becoming disenchanted with the press’ performance. In May 2009 Pew released a survey showing that 63 percent of Americans would not miss their newspaper if it ceased publication.