Here is that short essay that was handed in as an assignment for a University class titled something like The History of Media in the United States.
It's reposted now with the school's name deleted. Oops. My apologies.
Monke
The question the student answered is: George W. Bush and Al Gore complained (and media critics generally agreed) that press coverage during the recent campaign was superficial. Ralph Nader, Pat Buchanan, and other minor part candidates complained they were ignored. Based on class info, comment.
Toward a Theory of Media
As I read over my class notes for the first time, I began to ask the first question: What is really going on here? With that asking, several other lines of inquiry presented themselves one after the other. Who has an interest in knowing about an event or an idea? Who has sufficient influence to compel that revelation? Over whom can that influence be wielded to effect?
The questions provide an initial 'conceptual hopper' through which historical facts pertaining to developing journalism in the Americas may be sifted, and a structural framework upon which one may hang the results.
James W. Carey is right in stating, "The central and as yet unwritten history of journalism is the history of the idea of a report: its emergence among a certain group of people as a desirable form of rendering reality, its changing fortunes, definitions and redefinitions over time...(Carey, 5)" Of equal importance is the group of people who developed "the idea of a report," as well as the function/type of that group.
I think it evident that Carey's idea of a report grew up among decision makers and their agents. Implicit in this observation is the conviction that bias is extant in all reporting. The early commodification of both information and notoriety seems likely. I consider notoriety an early and valued byproduct of these knowledge transfers.
Spanish America was essentially a wealth harvesting/mining operation. The same European group interested in receiving the wealth of the New World had a perceived interest in knowing the activities, ideations, and events occurring in America pertaining to that wealth. The Spanish court exerted influence over its agents on-site in the form of directives, incentives, and punishments, therewith compelling both transfer of wealth and knowledge. Notoriety, arguably, resulted from either excellent or weak production/delivery of requisite commodities.
I posit that on-site, printed publication of information in the Spanish American colonies developed at a slack pace that may be understood in light of the questions mentioned above. A relatively small cadre of decision makers in America received directives, punishments, and incentives from Spain. They acquired information according to their perceived interests through open conversation with one another, and by trading gossip and intrigue with each other. In any group, those who perceive a need to know and have the influence to compel revelation will acquire knowledge. That acquisition was probably also facilitated by handwritten correspondence between influentials in various New World locales. A perceived need for a Press in Spanish America developed slowly and late relative to Spanish presence in the New World.
The New England colonies, in contrast, were essentially agrarian resettlement programs. Local industry facilitated farming and a shipping industry. As a result of real colonization, intended permanent settlement, there arose wider suffrage out of a larger transplanted population.
The English government exerted influence over its agents in America, compelling transfers of information and tax money. As in the Spanish American transfers of wealth and knowledge, the English transfers were conducted as written words and tangible units of trade/value by the medium of ships navigating trade routes.
In the British American colonies, agents of the English government ruled in some places, while agents of various forms of local suffrage conducted the business of state in others. In these colonies, local governing bodies responded to influence exerted from the distant homeland as well as that exerted by those locally enfranchised.
Those with the vote exercised influence in New England. Colonial voters were too numerous and were scattered over too large an area to converse or carry on a correspondence with every other. Voter interest in knowing the things pertaining to their maintenance of and ability to exert influence over resulted in the development of a press industry in the New England colonies.
I should here note that at some time early on in the pursuit of knowledge that serves an end, someone became aware that those reporting to their principals might also exercise an influence over those principals through their reporting. The report, as a transfer of information, when disseminated widely, served as an amplifier of the reporter's personality and/or ideations. Influence began to be exerted as reporting instead of simply to compel reporting. When the individual or group that first grasped it consciously understood this phenomenon, a subsidized, or partisan, press began to manifest.
Two other questions were now obvious to me. Who is interested in having others know about a particular event, consequence, or idea? Who can compel the publication of that event, consequence, or idea?
The phenomenon is roughly analogous to the first revolutionary discovery of the portability of measurements, probably by a stonemason or carpenter. Measurements taken in one place for the filling of, say, a niche with a particular cabinet or object are taken away to another place where the desired object is fashioned according to the measurements. The finished object is carried to the place the measurements were taken. When the item is installed, it fits! These world-changing discoveries each require a technician and a medium; the artisan wielding wood and tools, the reporter and a billboard or a printing press.
Early postmaster-printer-publishers reporting by authority of the Crown exemplify the use of the report as propaganda. Benjamin Franklin allowed anyone who paid him for space in his publications to exercise potential influence over other enfranchised, literate white men, as well as other disenfranchised readers, and those illiterates down to whom their interest skewed conversations might trickle.
Later, the subsidized partisan press in post-revolutionary New England became more blatantly biased and less strictly controlled. Each publication presented its openly biased views on political subjects.
Lately, I think, prime national and global decision makers are few in number relative to national and world populations. They are easily able to converse with one another, to trade gossip and intrigue, and to carry on wide private correspondences because of improved communications technology. The press, as an institution, exists, in their paradigm, to direct the thinking of those over whom they wield influence so that may retain the power to compel transfers of wealth unto themselves.
Have I propounded a paranoid, delusional theory of the Press? I have certainly asked obvious and relevant questions of the historical facts presented in a media history class at (School Name Deleted). I think it arguable that my embryonic theory explains the superficial coverage of candidates, events, issues, and non-issues in the recent U.S. national elections. My theory goes far to explain why authentic conservative and liberal voices received slight media attention during the late campaign/electoral process. Those voices were not subsidized by partisan factions interested in amplifying them to the end of compelling the media-aware public to exercise its franchise to wield influence as an agent of change.
To sum up, then, I have identified five questions arising out of the historical data presented as the history of media in America. Who has an interest in knowing about an event or an idea? Who has sufficient influence to compel the desired revelation? Over whom can that influence be wielded to effect? Who is interested in having others know about a particular event, consequence, or idea? Who can compel the publication of that event, consequence, or idea?
