Journalism

I

Introduction

Journalism, the gathering, evaluation, and processing of information, ideas, and factual stories, usually of current interest, for dissemination through a variety of media. Used in this way the word journalism describes an activity, but it also describes what is produced as a result of this activity—the editorial content of a newspaper, magazine, or other media outlet; and it is also the general term for the professional occupation of those who produce this material—journalists.

Journalism is not just news. While journalists strive to be first to bring a story to the attention of their readers, much print journalism today is not simply a first statement of the plain facts of a recent event: it provides background information or commentary on all kinds of topics, not just current affairs. News stories can now be watched on television or through the Internet as they are happening, thanks to satellite and digital technology. So while journalism originally referred to the print media alone, now, in the early 21st century, it includes material prepared for media such as radio, television, websites, MP3 players (see Sound Recording and Reproduction), and even mobile phones.

II

Historical Survey

The first instance of news being collected and distributed, by post, was in China during the Han dynasty, from 206 bc. The first printed newspaper, produced from wood blocks, appeared in Beijing in the 7th or 8th century ad. In the mid-15th century, wider and faster dissemination of news was made possible by the invention in Europe of movable type by the German printer Johann Gutenberg. In France, between 1488 and 1529, printed “occasionnels” were published sporadically, as vehicles for government information.

The first newspapers consisted of foreign news reports because home news was prohibited. The first English news-sheet, published by Nicholas Bourne and Thomas Archer in May 1622, was called the “Weekly Newes from Italy, Germanie, Hungaria, translated out of the low Dutch copie”. In 1641 journalists were allowed to report the proceedings of Parliament, but such reporting was banned again in 1660, so when the first daily newspaper was launched in the United Kingdom, the Daily Courant in 1702, it contained no home news. It was not until the launch of the Daily Post in 1719 that journalists were again permitted to report home news stories.

The first daily newspaper in the world, the Einkommende Zeitung, was published in 1650 by the bookseller Timotheus Ritzsch in Leipzig. Advertisements were included in a publication for the first time in 1637 in France by Théophraste Renaudot.

By the early 18th century, politicians in Britain had begun to understand the potential of the press as a shaper of public opinion and journalism therefore became a significant factor in the democratic process. This early journalism was largely political in nature and several great English journalists flourished during the period, among them Daniel Defoe, Jonathan Swift, Joseph Addison, and Sir Richard Steele. Although the emphasis was on foreign news and politics, there was room to entertain readers with other kinds of writing such as gossip, scandal, opinion, and advice columns. It was not until the middle of the century, however, that journalists were first able to make a living entirely from writing.

In the English colonies of North America, the first newspaper was Publick Occurrences, Both Foreign and Domestick, published in Boston in 1690; it was suppressed and its editor, Benjamin Harris, imprisoned. The precedent-setting case involving freedom of the press in America was the trial of the publisher John Peter Zenger in 1735 for publishing articles critical of the colonial authorities in New York. He was acquitted of criminal libel.

Journalism in the 19th century was affected by the Industrial Revolution and the spread of public education. Newly literate masses demanded reading matter; new machinery, and especially the development of linotype in 1886, made it possible to produce this inexpensively and in quantity. In the United States, Joseph Pulitzer, Edward Wyllis Scripps, and William Randolph Hearst established newspapers to appeal to the growing populations of the big cities. Wire services, exploiting the invention of the telegraph, facilitated rapid gathering and dissemination of world news. These services included Reuters and the Press Association, based in Britain, and the Associated Press and United Press (later United Press International) in the United States. (See Press Associations and Press Agencies.)

In Britain, the abolition of stamp tax in 1855 and of government duty on advertisements in 1853 encouraged the growth of newspapers and magazines. The Economist, a news magazine devoted to financial matters, was founded in 1843. It remains the world’s most influential business weekly and has a global circulation of more than a million. By 1877 the circulation of The Daily Telegraph stood at 240,000, the highest in the world. The editor of The Daily Telegraph, Edward Lawson, invented box numbers for adverts, and sponsorship. His paper sponsored the 1874 expedition to Africa by Henry Morton Stanley. Alfred Harmsworth, who later became Lord Northcliffe, founded the Daily Mail in 1896. Within three years he had built its circulation to more than half a million, easily twice that of any other newspaper. Harmsworth, whose family still owns the Daily Mail, then launched the Daily Mirror as the first tabloid-sized newspaper in 1903. The Sunday paper News of the World was selling one and a half million copies by 1909.

New popular magazines were made possible by developments in printing technology, improvements in transport, low postal rates, and the emergence of national brands of consumer goods that required national media in which to advertise. In the United States, The Ladies’ Home Journal was founded by Cyrus H. K. Curtis in 1883 and soon had a circulation of almost a million. Many other magazines appealing to the general reader appeared in the 20th century, including Reader's Digest, Life, and Look. The news magazines Time, Newsweek, and US News & World Report have continued to occupy an important place in journalism. In the United Kingdom, too, the 20th century was a period of rapid expansion in magazine journalism. Some titles, such as Vogue and Good Housekeeping, were transferred from the United States. Others such as Radio Times, Picture Post, and Woman were homegrown. (See Periodicals.)

Two new forms of news journalism media appeared early in the 20th century: cinema newsreels and radio. By the 1920s newsreels in the United States were reaching about 40 million people a week in some 18,000 cinemas, but they were displaced by television in the 1950s and 1960s. Radio stations in the United States started to report current events in the 1920s, and by World War II, radio had attracted a huge audience thanks to the proliferation of stations.

In Britain the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) was founded in 1922 as a private company, which became a public corporation in 1927. Journalism was a significant part of its activities from the start. Between 1920 and 1967 three national radio stations were launched, all of them run by the BBC, which also launched a fourth in 1967 and then 39 local radio stations. Six years later Independent Local Radio was authorized and today there are more than 200 ILR licensed services. In 1990 BBC Radio Five Live was launched, concentrating on news and sport. Since 2003, responsibility for the control of radio and television frequencies has rested with the Office of Communications (Ofcom) (see Regulation in Broadcasting). Not all stations offer news journalism other than as a brief bulletin between programmes, but for many the provision of local news is a significant part of their remit.

Television in the United Kingdom was operated solely by the BBC until 1954 when ITV, a grouping of independent broadcasters based on 16 geographical regions was allowed to offer a competing service and to provide news coverage through its offshoot Independent Television News (ITN). While the BBC has always been funded by an annual mandatory licence fee, the amount determined and reviewed by the government of the day, ITV depends on advertising revenue, as does Channel 4, founded in 1982, and Channel 5, established in 1997.

After television became commercially viable in the 1950s, in the United States network newscasters gradually became national figures. Since the introduction in 1951 of the first major documentary series, See It Now, featuring Edward R. Murrow, American television documentaries have become important news sources. The Cable News Network (CNN), operating in a news-only format 24 hours a day, had reached 77 million US and Canadian households by 2000, and its CNN International broadcasts were being relayed by satellite to more than 200 other countries.

Operating from Qatar in the Middle East, the Arabic-language television news channel al-Jazeera came to international attention in 2003 with its coverage of the War on Iraq and in 2006 launched a service in English; its output is also accessible via the World Wide Web.

III

Journalists as Social Critics

During the 19th century newspapers and magazines increasingly campaigned for social and political reforms partly as a way of attracting mass audiences. In the United States, Hearst and Pulitzer spoke out against the social evils of their day. Crusading journalists in the early years of the 20th century helped to bring about reforms, such as antitrust legislation and the passage of pure food laws.

Journalists continue to serve as watchdogs on behalf of the public. In the 1960s, American television broadcast pictures of civil rights demonstrations and the brutal means sometimes used to control them. Convinced that US officials were not telling the truth about the Vietnam War, American reporters, including David Halberstam of The New York Times, Neil Sheehan of United Press International, and Malcolm Browne and Peter Arnett of the Associated Press, as well as the Australian journalist John Pilger, were instrumental in turning public opinion against the war; while Pilger later used the medium of the television documentary to become the first to lay bare the atrocities perpetrated by Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. In 1972 and 1973, led by investigative reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein from the Washington Post, the US press exposed links between the administration of President Nixon and a burglary of the Democratic Party national headquarters at the Watergate Hotel in Washington, D.C., in what became known as the Watergate scandal. Senate hearings on the scandal and preparations of the House of Representatives for impeachment were carried by live television and attracted huge audiences. President Nixon resigned soon afterwards. Attacks on government and on various social conditions led to the establishment of “press councils” to expose journalistic irresponsibility. Various newspapers also appointed ombudsmen to investigate complaints, a practice followed by some newspapers in the United Kingdom; the first to do so in the UK was The Guardian, which appointed a Readers’ Editor in this internal ombudsman role.

In the United Kingdom the “self-regulating” Press Complaints Commission adjudicates on complaints about the print media and can impose modest sanctions on editors and reporters who breach its code of practice. Opinion is divided as to whether its powers are strong enough. British journalists are in any case restricted by law in what they can write about a range of issues including criminal cases and military matters. Unjustifiable criticism can be redressed through the laws of libel. Until 2002 there was no right of access to a wide range of public documentation, but with the introduction of the Freedom of Information Act this situation has improved somewhat although it is still not as easy for British journalists (or the public) to access information from public bodies as it is in the United States.

The freedom of journalists to write what they want remains an important issue in many countries. Organizations such as the French-based Reporters Sans Frontières and the charity Amnesty International actively campaign for press freedom as does the UK-based Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom. In the United States, government efforts to prevent publication of the Pentagon Papers, a collection of documents on the Vietnam War, were struck down by the courts in 1971 as a violation of the 1st Amendment to the US Constitution. The United Kingdom has no equivalent.

Just as journalism can play a part in holding those in authority to account for their actions, it may also contribute to upholding the values of the ruling and business classes due to the way in which publications are owned and the increasing activities and influence of lobbyists and “spin doctors”. These are people whose job is to represent in the most positive light the organizations or individuals for whom they work.

IV

Working as a Journalist

Journalists are now expected to learn many of the necessary basic skills before they begin their career. In the United States there is a longer tradition of training journalists in universities than in the United Kingdom, where it was not until the early 1970s that these institutions began to be seen as suitable places to educate and train journalists. Hundreds of courses have now been set up, with the National Council for the Training of Journalists (NCTJ) at the forefront of journalism training in the UK. However, there is no set system of qualification for entry and it is still possible, although unlikely, to become a journalist without studying beyond school level; until the 1970s the normal route was to leave school and join a paper as an indentured trainee. Now most of those who enter journalism are graduates although not all have studied journalism. Experience with university media can count for a lot, as can unpaid work experience. Some media companies such as the BBC and ITN organize their own training schemes, but many do not and journalists may end up having to pay for their own mid-career training.

What journalists do is varied and continuously changing. The job involves research of some kind, often interviewing either for background information or to source usable quotations. Writing is a key skill for every journalist in every medium. For many the work is about editing what others have written and preparing it for publication. These journalists, called sub-editors or copy-editors, check the copy (written text) for accuracy, for sense, for quality of writing, and also for any potential legal problems such as libel or contempt of court. They also write headlines and picture captions. Sub-editors on newspapers may be called production journalists and take on more responsibility for the day-to-day layout and design of individual pages, although usually within an overall pattern laid down by specialist designers. For other journalists their role is to decide what to commission, what to publish, and with what prominence. The news editor, for example, decides which stories will be assigned to which reporters. The copytaster, on a newspaper, is the journalist who selects which stories to use from those chosen by the news editor and then written by the reporters. Recent changes in newspapers mean that much of what appears in print is, in effect, features journalism. This demands a different style of writing and editing and comes under the direction of a features editor. In many newspapers a team of senior journalists, collectively called “the back bench”, makes the final decisions about the look of the pages, the emphasis given to each story, and the flow of stories through the publication. Presentation of journalistic material is more important than ever in competitive markets and so photographers and graphic designers must also develop an understanding of journalism; some photographers, whether for television or print, are regarded as journalists in their own right and their work is labelled photojournalism.

Journalism is seen by many young people as a highly desirable career option because of the variety of the work, the perceived excitement of being at the scene of dramatic events, the possibility of exercising influence, or even just the opportunity of pursuing a personal interest as a specialist reporter.