Media Bias
Is slanted reporting replacing objectivity?
By Robert KienerMay 3, 2013 – Volume 23, Issue 17
Historians are quick to point out that the roots of American journalism were deeply embedded in partisan soil. Bias was the norm during journalism's formative years in this country. Indeed, the very idea of an unbiased press was anathema to the nation's early citizens.
Newspapers reflected the opinions of their owners and publishers. “For most of American history … there was only opinion, and highly partisan opinion at that,” said Sheppard of Long Island University.48In The Partisan Press, Sheppard cites several early newspaper owners and publishers who attacked the ideas of balance and objectivity:
On Sept. 4, 1798, the Newark Gazettedescribed giving equal time to both sides of the political divide a “‘folly that should not be tolerated.’”49
On July 17, 1799, The Washington Mirror said treating parties equally was impossible, and that “printers who ‘pretended’ neutrality succeeded only in willfully misleading the people.”50
On March 10, 1800, the New York American Citizen called impartiality “‘injurious to the best interests of mankind.’”51
Newspapers and their political pamphlet cousins were “mouthpieces” for the political parties of the era.52
Many newspapers were even supported directly by politicians. For example, Thomas Jefferson helped pay for the startup and running of the National Gazette, and Alexander Hamilton supported the Gazette of the United States.
“This gave an acrimonious tone to public discourse, since newspapers had no incentive to temper the language they used to criticize opponents,” wrote George Mason University's Lichter.53 In addition, newspapers often had lucrative government printing contracts, which also promoted biased reporting.
To temper the political bias of the press, the government — led by President John Adams' Federalist Party — passed the Sedition Act of 1798, which made it a crime to publish “false, scandalous and malicious writing” about the president or Congress. It enabled the government to close down many opposition Republican newspapers but caused such a voter backlash that Adams was not re-elected. The act expired in 1801.54
The partisan press also placed party above accuracy. Some editors and reporters even worked part-time for politicians.55 Others were key party leaders.56 Some have called the first quarter of the 19th century the “Dark Ages of American journalism.”57
“Even Jefferson, who famously preferred newspapers without government to government without newspapers, later complained that newspapers made their readers less well informed because ‘he who knows nothing is nearer to truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehood and errors,’” wrote Lichter.58
