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

analysis from scholars and journalism professionals centers on examinations of the dysfunctional business models of traditional journalism and the rise of alternative online options for people to consume (and even create) news.

From the business model perspective, when it comes to discussing journalism’s increasing relevancy problems, political economy studies of the media offer critiques of ownership pressures that are contributing to the traditional press’ downfall.¹¹ As one illustration of this strong strain of analysis in modern journalism criticism, in the spring of 2009 The Nation published an extensive call for reform of the press by journalist John Nichols and scholar Robert McChesney. The key to preserving quality newspapers, they say, is a commitment from government to “using tax policies, credit policies and explicit subsidies” that can help professional journalism become more functional in the digital realm.¹²

Others examine the traditional news media as simply struggling to turn the curve toward making itself more viable in the interactive realm.¹³ Here, scholarly discussion examines the pressing imperative of the digital sphere on the newsroom. Some of the scholarship, like that of Joyce Nip, examines how journalism is just now grasping with the various levels of interactivity involved in news reporting—up to, and including, citizens’ primarily gathering and reporting their conceptions of the news.¹⁴ Much of the scholarship on the digital pressures on journalism is still emerging and covers areas as diverse as convergence models, news consumer use of digital news, and use of blogs by news professionals.¹⁵ Even Kirchhoff’s congressional report stressed technical solutions for journalism’s relevancy problems, emphasizing new online models like subscription-supported news Web sites and Amazon’s Kindle e-reader.¹⁶

While these threads of analysis are valuable, they are, in the main, ahistorical and fail to address another vital component that is contributing to the traditional press’ credibility problems: professional journalism’s own enduring frame for providing accounts of the world. Editors and reporters approach the day’s accounts with an orientation that touts the principle of objectivity, focuses on data and facts, and strives forbalance. Such journalistic values and practices were seen as essential to