Battling Abuses in the 1800s, The Closing of the Series

From The Pratt Tribune

The same week I began this series about the role of muckrakers and the important role they have played in print news, our local newspaper announced that it was going to a single paper each week.  I identified with J.S. who wrote:  "Wow, quite a change...when I worked there... we printed Monday-Saturday…"  

I grew up with our family getting The Pratt Tribune, (and some of you may recall my blog about finding an old copy of that newspaper inside the wall when we did our recent remodeling at the farm).  Back then, when we walked out to the mailbox, the news was only a day old.

The same week that my Battling Abuses series began, the CBS Sunday Morning show broadcast a special interview of Pete Hamill that included respect for his fellow reporter, Jimmy Breslin.  Breslin died in 2017, and Hamill has slowed down considerably from the days when the two of them were, as filmmaker Spike Lee described:  "Back in the day, I mean, you would buy the paper to see what Jimmy Breslin's saying.  You know, what Pete Hamill [says]…[T]hose guys were like superstars."

I have written in past blogs about the essential role of journalists for our democracy, and we cannot forget their importance.  Our Founding Fathers recognized the importance of a Free Press, but too many of us fail to respect the absolute necessity of the role played by the press.

Ad from a local business in Isaac's time

On the CBS Sunday Morning show October 6, 2019, Hamill explained:  "The papers gave a sense of meaning.  It was a binding element.  You could see it on the subway.  You [reporters] were trying to help the new arrivals to understand the city, and the older people to understand the new arrivals."    Small town newspapers play that role as well, but not if most of the contents are canned stories written by strangers.

After my father died and my mother moved into town, she became a reporter.  She loved it.  Being a reporter gave her an excuse to attend community events and to get on the phone and call people for news about visitors or trips or achievements.  It may have been small town news, but it was consistent with the role Hamill played in a big city--binding the people who lived there to one another.

Times change.  The number of shops that lined Main Street in small towns and cities are no longer there, so far fewer local ads that supported local papers now exist.  Today people are warned to protect personal information, making them less willing to supply the stories that would once have appeared in the newspaper.  The internet has replaced chatty phone calls and handwritten letters, and now it is replacing small town newspapers.  Even large city newspapers are struggling.

Once there were both morning and evening editions for newspapers, but today we want our news as quickly as it happens.  "Hot off the press!" isn't fast enough, nor is Uncle Walter* on the evening news.  Now we have televisions and the internet with constant news reports, crawls across the bottom of the screen, and news fed to our phones.

Political Cartoon about a biased press

In earlier blogs I have emphasized the importance of professional standards for the news reporters we read and to whom we listen and watch.  For me, biased news is like reading fiction, or, at its worst, propaganda.  If we are to keep news reporters accurate, we need to take the time to find the original source at least occasionally to check it for ourselves.

We also need to stop watching/reading only those with whom we agree, especially if we catch them twisting the truth.  Like the old saying when computers were new, junk in--junk out.  I realize that it is easier for some of us to fact check than for those employed 8+ hours a day, those busy raising children and caring for elderly parents, or those otherwise involved in commitments that fill their days, but it is important that all of us to try to be accurately informed.  We need to be clear about the difference between those delivering Opinion Editorials, those intentionally slanting  or distorting information, and those abiding by professional standards for the delivery of news.

I will close with what I found most interesting in the interview of Pete Hamill.  He was asked, "Would you say you grew up poor?"

"Oh, we grew up poor, but not impoverished," Hamill said.

What's the difference, the interviewer asked.

"The library." 

Hamill continued, "I wouldn't be alive today if it wasn't for the lessons I learned in this place.  [the public library]"  Later, Hamill added an enlightening story about fellow reporter Jimmy Breslin.  "One day he needed to find something in his desk.  And he asked me to go to his desk, 'open the drawer and it'll be on the right-hand side.'  Lying in front of me is The Collected Poetry of W.H. Auden."  Being literate was part of being an educated person in those times, even if you were a hard-nosed reporter like Breslin.

Recognize propaganda (from my old text book)

With our present day 'need for speed,' and consumer ratings, not only are newspapers dying, so is the habit of reading.  Authors and poets have time...time to reflect, to compose, to edit, to lay their work aside and look at it with fresh more critical eyes later, to seek the opinions of respected friends and others knowledgeable about the subject...time to perfect what they publish.  Even as newspaper reporters facing quick deadlines, Breslin and Hamill knew that it was important to make time for books and poetry.  It remains true today that to be informed and literate, our reading needs to be supplemented by more than the "breaking news" that scrolls across the bottom of our screen.  Magazines are struggling to find readers, and it is important to have access to their more reflective news that gets at least a few days or weeks of research and investigation before it is published.  Before print magazines go the way of newspapers, we need to subscribe to the ones we respect for more in depth news reporting.  

Recognize propaganda (from my old textbook)

The responsibility to be reflective rests with all of us-- to read history, to check the constitution, to read biographies and non-fiction related to the subject, to see what another channel on tv or commentator on the internet or newspaper reporter with more time to check facts has to say.  To be fooled requires two people--the one who seeks to fool and the one who falls for it!

The 'Abuses in the 1800s' that Isaac and his contemporaries faced were not entirely unlike our own examples.  Today's abuses may come at us faster and from more directions, but we also have more access to ways to check what is accurate.  We need muckrakers today as much or more than ever.



*For younger readers of the blog, Walter Cronkite delivered the evening news for CBS, and had a reputation for accurate reporting.

Remember, you can click on images to enlarge.     

The Founding Fathers & Freedom of the Press

It may be remembered from last week's post that George Washington considered Freedom of Speech so important that without it, he feared Americans would be rendered "dumb and silent."  I'm not sure whether he used the term "dumb" to mean 'without speech' or 'stupid.'  Either way, it was clear that Washington regarded freedom of speech very highly.

There was a great debate among our Founding Fathers regarding the need for a Bill of Rights.  Some felt there was no need, since what wasn't expressly given away by citizens to the government was a freedom they retained.  Others felt that a Bill of Rights was essential to protect particular freedoms by enumerating them.  Still others questioned how it would be possible to name every possible freedom meant to be retained by citizens.  Some arguments were a matter of political practicality--opposition to adding a Bill of Rights was motivated by the goal of getting the Constitution ratified as promptly as possible, without getting tangled up in debates over a Bill of Rights. Obviously, the Constitution was ratified and a Bill of Rights was added, which courts have construed to protect our freedoms.

Representative Journals of the United States, 1885; Newspapers and their editors shown:  1st Row:  The Union and Adviser, Wm Purcell; The omaha Daily Bee, Edward Rosewater; The Boston Daily Globe, Chs. H. Taylor; Boston Morning Journal, Wm Warland Clapp; The Kansas City Times, Morrison Mumford; The Pittsburg Diispatch, Eugene M. O'Neill.  2nd Row:  Albany Evening Journal, John A. Sleicher; The Milwaukee Sentinel, Horace Rublee; The Philadelphia Record, Wm M. Singerly; The New York Times, Geo. Jones; The Philadelphia Press, Chs. Emory Smith; The Daily Inter Ocean, Wm Penn Nixon; The news & Courier, Francis Warington Dawson.  3rd Row:  Buffalo Express, James Newson Smith; The Daily Pioneer Press, Jos. A. Wheelock; The Atlanta Constitution, Henry W. Grady and Evan Howell; San Francisco Chronicle, Michael H. de Young; The Washington Post, Stilson Hitchins.  (Enlarge by clicking on the image.)

Freedom of the Press was one of those freedoms about which concerns were raised as ratification of the Constitution was debated.  Some states had already included freedom of the press in their state constitutions.  In #84 of The Federalist Papers, Alexander Hamilton addressed concerns about the need for expressly protecting freedom of the press.  He did not disagree with the importance of a free press but rather based his argument on the impractically of drafting such protection.  "What is the liberty of the press?" he asked.  "Who can give it any definition which would not leave the utmost latitude for evasion?"  Hamilton continued, "...whatever fine declarations may be inserted in any constitution respecting it, must altogether depend on public opinion, and on the general opinion of the people and of the government."

Yet, ultimately it was decided that a Bill of Rights should be added, and the First Amendment to the Constitution states "Congress shall make no law...abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press..."

Coverage of the Sinking of the Maine

That freedom is not completely without limit.  For example, courts have ruled that a man cannot stand up in a theater and shout "Fire!" when there is none, to cause a panic that would likely cause injury to those attempting to flee a nonexistent danger.  Pornography is another example of limited speech, as is slandar.  In addition to legal limits, social customs have also limited speech in such ways as disapproving vulgarity, expecting the courtesy of quiet during religious observances and cultural performances, and observing traditions of sportsmanship during athletic competitions.  Each generation has shaped those customs.

From a political perspective, free speech and a free press allow issues to be debated and policies to be shaped.  In the case of Whitney v. California, decided in 1927, Justice Louis Brandeis wrote:  "...freedom to think as you will and to speak as you think are means indispensable to the discovery and spread of political truth."  In the 1880s and 1890s of Isaac Werner's time, publishers like William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer exerted huge influence across the nation, Hearst with the San Francisco Examiner, published in San Francisco, and Pulitizer with The World, published in New York. But, as described in last week's blog, countless small newspapers in towns across the nation also exerted their influence.

Coverage of the Sinking of the Maine

The images of front page coverage of the sinking of the Maine in Cuba illustrate the power of newspapers to inflame national support for declaring war against Spain, the New York Journal describing the explosion as "the work of an enemy" and The World declaring "caused by bomb or torpedo.  The advance toward war was already underway when investigation led to the conclusion that explosion of a boiler on the ship was the likely cause.

Today, many once powerful newspapers have ceased to exist, and the newspapers still being published in small towns have shrunk to a few pages which are no longer published daily.  Americans are more likely to get their news on television and the internet than from a daily newspaper, and concern is growing about altnews and 'alternativefacts.'

However, questions about truth and accuracy in the press are nothing new.  In doing the research for my manuscript, I found one interesting example.  Homesteaders in Kansas and elsewhere had gone deeply in debt when prices for their crops were high, and they had mortgaged their farms to pay for livestock, implements, fencing, and improvements such as buildings and windmills.  When crop prices fell and interest rates for the renewal of their loans soared, they were at risk of foreclosure.  A fear spread that English investors would buy up the mortgages and American farmers would fall victim to a serfdom like tenant farmers in Ireland.  Political parties added prohibitions against foreign ownership of land to their platforms--not just the populists but also the two mainstream parties, and states passed laws prohibiting foreign ownership of land.  Yet, while there were examples in Kansas and other states of communities in which settlers from other nations came as a group to settle, I struggled to find examples of foreign investors attempting to replicate the Irish system of tenant farmers in America, although many newspapers warned of that threat.

Next week's blog will explore the continuing role of the press in America, both in the past and the present.

The County Capital & The St. John News

Ad from the County Capital

For those of you who follow this blog, you have frequently seen references to The County Capital.  It was the newspaper to which Isaac Werner subscribed and for which he occasionally wrote.  It was the newspaper of the progressive movement, and it unabashedly supported populist ideas.

The St. John News was the Republican newspaper.  Its bias was equally obvious, for which they made no apologies.  That was the practice of that era, and people subscribed to the paper with which they agreed.

The community of Stafford had the Stafford Democrat, which declared its perspective in its name, so it appears that if you lived in Stafford County in the 1880s, you were able to subscribe to a newspaper that printed the news with the bias that allowed you to read the news from the perspective you wanted to read.  

Just as I have often quoted from one of President Bush's advisors, "People read to be affirmed, not to be informed," and that was true in Isaac's time, just as it is today.  While it might be thought that the internet, which makes access to information so easily available, would make people more broadly informed, that has not appeared to be the case.

Political cartoon re wealthy control of the press

Freedom of the press is one of our most valued promises, alongside freedom of speech.  They are really just two sides of the same coin, for one is a form of speech published widely and the other is speech which may or may not be more limited.  Our first President, George Washington, said:  "If the freedom of speech is taken away then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter."  But what if that freedom is used to protect misinformation and propaganda as well as factual information?

Americans are generous in protecting these freedoms.  As lawyer Alan Dershowitz has said:  "Freedom of speech means freedom for those who you despise, and freedom to express the most despicable views.  It also means that the government cannot pick and choose which expressions to authorize and which to prevent. 

Clearly, in Isaac's time the use of newspapers for political purposes was commonplace.  Political parties even endorsed specific newspapers as their official organ.  The St. John News made a joke of having lost subscribers due to the popularity of the populist movement in their area, saying 'now our former subscribers have to borrow a copy to read the News.'

The importance of free speech is not just an American ideal, however. French novelist, Marcel Proust, who lived from 1871 to 1922, wrote:  "As long as men are free to ask what they must, free to say what they think, free to think what they will, freedom can never be lost and science can never regress."

Ad from the County Capital

Even earlier, French lawyer and member of the Committee of Public Safety, Maximilien Robespierre (1758-1794) wrote:  "The secret of freedom lies in educating people, whereas the secret of tyranny is in keeping them ignorant."  That enlightened quote must be considered, however, with awareness that he is perhaps best known for his role in the French Revolution's Reign of Terror and his support for political killings.

In researching the populist movement that swept the nation in the 1880s and 1890s, and which found such acceptance in Kansas, newspapers were a valuable source for my research.  Even small towns had multiple newspapers.  Without radio, television or the internet, people got their news from the newspapers and from orators that traveled the country to speak at large mass rallies.  It was an exciting time in Kansas.  Next week I will share more history about balancing freedom of speech and the press with the delivery of information for an informed public.

The ads and the political cartoon are from the County Capital newspaper during the late 1880s and early 1890s.