Blog Post 6; "Good Night, and Good Luck" Reflection - I Dare You To Disagree

I Dare You To Disagree

    "Good Night, and Good Luck" is a movie based off of a true story by George Clooney that portrays the tensions between the news and the government during the Red Scare of the 1940s and 50s. It circulates around CBS reporter, Edward R. Murrow, who states from the beginning that television and the media are a distraction and distort our perception of the world.

    What sparked this tension is Joseph McCarthy's rash campaign to weed out communists in America. Edward Murrow, enraged by this, dedicates himself to exploiting and addressing the unjust decisions and actions of McCarthy's "investigation." Thankfully, Murrow had the support of his entire news team and together they worked tirelessly to shed light on the senator's lies, excuses, and bias. In the midst of this, Murrow and his team are greeted with constant pressure and threats from CBS corporate sponsors to desist. But they don't. Murrow and his team were committed to delivering the honest truth. 

    The entire story illustrates the tensions between patriotism and punishing, fear and informational integrity, and personal morals. It highlights the biased and arguably wrongful decision the court came to and how it accused people of communist relations without due process. Even though political affiliation was a touchy subject at the time (and still today) an accusation is not proof. 

    Murrow and others advocated through their stories and reports for a fair trial to defend the freedom of those accused. The entire situation stemmed from fear. Fear that was provoked by the government and false media. It even got to a point where McCarthy was exposed for stating that anyone who disagreed with him or his senate was a communist. That doesn't seem very fair to me. It didn't seem fair to Murrow either. 

    Murrow and his team were on a quest for the truth. The honest truth. The truth that the American people deserve. This kind of advocacy and dedication to uncovering the truth is exactly the kind of journalism we need. We need more writers and journalists like Murrow to have the passion and drive for delivering the truth. 

    This film, at least in my opinion, is extremely applicable today. As political tensions, polarization, bias, and unjust rise, we need more people willing to uncover and expose the truth. This film also affirmed to me why I chose journalism. There are of course risks to delivering the truth, as we see Murrow being threatened to lose his job, but it is a moral and ethical obligation of journalists to deliver the truth and I'm willing to take that. It's difficult and intimidating for journalists to disagree with the government, and it's rare. But, if all of the ideas, opinions, and interpretations of the government's doings are not on the table, then we are not a democracy. 

    I believe the bigger issue Murrow and his team saw with this case was that it dwindled down to the true meaning of democracy, liberty, and freedom. The very things America was built on and because of his efforts to expose the truth, people were given fair trials and their truths were uncovered too. 

    I think for me and for other aspiring journalists, we need to be more willing to disagree. We have to be willing, daring, and courageous enough to ditch what the government and media giants feed us and truly seek to uncover the truth for the betterment of others. It's a lesson we could learn from Murrow and it's a lesson that I think applies far beyond journalism. 

"To be credible, we must be truthful."

- Edward R. Murrow

Blog Post 5; EOTO 2 - Horace Greeley; A Journalism Hero

Horace Greeley; A Journalism Hero

"Journalism will kill you, but it will keep you alive while you're at it."

- Horace Greeley

An American journalist, publisher, editor, and politician who is known for his political legacy and newspaper, The New York Tribune, is Horace Greeley. But how did he get there and what influence did he leave behind?

    Horace Greeley was born on February 3, 1811, in Amherst, New Hampshire. He was the son of a New England farmer and was raised in the rural parts of the northeast. Due to the economic struggles of his family, Greeley had inconsistent schooling that ended when he was 14 years old. 

    Despite these economic and educational struggles, Greeley knew he did not want to become a farmer. He decided to flee his home in 1822 to pursue something he enjoyed. Over and over again he was told he was too young or unskilled, until 1826 when he was able to be an apprentice at the age of 14 to a newspaper editor in Vermont. It was here that Greeley learned the value of news and how it operates. Greeley served as an apprentice for about 5 years until 1831, when he decided to take matters into his own hands and move to New York City. 

    This turned out to be a very successful move for 20-year-old Greeley. He found himself with various job opportunities which provided him with some valuable capital. However, Greeley, again, decided to do it his way and started his own weekly literary and news journal in 1834, the New Yorker.

    Greeley contributed to the journal greatly as he was an extensive reader with a passion to write and edit. The journal attracted an extensive audience and reputation for Greeley, however, despite his efforts to keep the journal going, it failed to make money. Because of this, Greeley had to supplement his income by writing in support of the Whig party. This writing led him to gain connections with Thurlow Weed and William H. Seward as well as other famous Whigs. These connections paved the way for Greeley in his first editorship and work with weekly campaigns for the Log Cabin in 1840. This work with the Log Cabin grew Greeley's reputation and popularity which helped him in his future endeavors. 

    After gaining a respectable reputation with the Log Cabin, Greeley decided to go his own way and start his path to national prominence and founded the New York Tribune in 1841. Throughout the Tribune's upbringing, Greeley made it clear that as editor he was shifting things to what he envisioned. The paper became the dominant Republican source and soon became the leading paper in New York at the time. While the papers in this time were largely partisan-based, Greeley added sections about general city news, special articles, crime, book reviews, poetry, and other intellectual reading to appeal to a broader audience. These additions added to the Tribune's overall success, leading Greeley to become one of the head roles of the newspaper world in New York. 

    After the Tribune had gained extensive popularity and reached a circulation of about 200,000, Horace Greeley became a very prominent Republican figure. One of the most notable moments of Greeley's career was his crucial role in the political aspects of the Civil War. 

    One bit of information about Horace Greeley's political affiliation, as well as the Tribunes', was the support of Lincoln. Greeley very openly supported Lincoln when he first ran for president during the Civil War, but not when he re-ran in 1864. This support of Lincoln became a very controversial topic for the Tribune. Other controversial topics Greeley and the Tribune published were the promotion of abolishing slavery and opposing women's suffrage.

    To illustrate these views, Greeley famously editorialized on December 17, 1860, "For our own part, while we deny the right of slaveholders to hold slaves against the will of the latter, we cannot see how twenty millions of people can rightfully hold ten, or even five, in a detested union with them, by military force."

    Six weeks after Lincoln was elected, during the secession crisis, Greeley and the Tribune introduced the view called "peaceable secession". This idea was that the North should allow the disunionist South to depart in peace. 

    

    These radical views and ideas early on led to Greeley's importance during the Civil War. He was most widely known for his involvement with peace efforts. After learning that Confederate diplomats who were interested in peace negotiations were located in Canada, Greeley became one of the leading figures of the 1864 Niagara Peace Conference. Greeley then was able to mention these matters to president Lincoln, who then sent him to meet the Confederates on the condition that he aimed to restore the Union and abolish slavery. 

    Though these negotiations proved ineffective, Greeley continued to advocate and demonstrate an interest in making peace efforts until the end of the war. 

    In the midst of the war years, president Lincoln joined those radical Republicans who fought for a more vigorous prosecution of the war and believed that the war should include emancipation and the complete destruction of slavery. As a radical himself, Greeley's relationship with Lincoln was a bit muddled. There were times when Greeley was critical of Lincoln and argued that his political and military leadership was mediocre. This criticism is what ultimately led to Greeley no longer supporting Lincoln in his re-run in 1864. This did cause Greeley to lose some popular support but his premature peace efforts did as well, yet he still was a respected figure. 

    As mentioned, during and after the Civil War, Greeley and his political association were deemed highly controversial. During the period of presidential reconstruction from 1865 to 1867, Horace Greeley remained a radical Republican. He continuously insisted that freedom and equal rights for African-Americans were crucial and had to be the cornerstone of any kind of reconstruction effort.  Towards the end of the reconstruction, Greely joined the Congressional radicals to further his advocacy and support of equality for freedmen. 

    Due to all of his efforts on behalf of radical reconstruction, Greeley remained a classical liberal. He was reluctant to use the power of any state to ensure equal rights for African-Americans, as he thought it would not create a change that stuck. He was also very openly opposed to plans to confiscate land in the south for freedmen as well as being alienated by the radical tenor of labor activism after the war. In fact, Greeley was averse to any class view of the labor situation and stood on his belief in class harmony. He placed his faith in labor in cooperative movements and groups. 

    A few years later during the first administration of President Ulysses S. Grant, partly from political rebuff and from disagreement with the corruption, Greeley joined a group of Republican dissenters, who formed the Liberal Republican party.  Greeley's retreat from radicalism was finalized and embodied by his official involvement with the Liberal Republican movement. This was the movement that began to support amnesty, tariff reform, civil service reform, and opposition to the Grant administration as a whole.

    At the Liberal Republican's national convention that was held in Cincinnati in May of 1872, Horace Greeley was nominated for president. With a lack of a viable candidate who also had national appeal, the Democratic Party also endorsed Greeley for president. This was major and made the Tribune editor the first person to be nominated for president by two different parties. 

    While Greeley was greatly admired, he was also seen as eccentric and odd both in his personal appearance and radical reformist ideas. His behavior during and after the war raised eyebrows and cast doubt about his judgment. When Greeley was nominated to challenge Grant, he was attacked and labeled as a fool and a crank. In the dreary campaign that followed, the assault was so merciless that he said he scarcely knew whether he was running for the presidency or the penitentiary. 

    However, despite his party's inexperience and personal criticism, Greeley polled more than 40 percent of the popular vote.

    Unfortunately, during this time the Tribune went under significant change. The era of personal editorship was coming to a close and the Tribune was increasing to a size Greeley couldn't handle on his own and his influence diminished and passed off to others. In addition to the loss of his editorship, Greely was also losing drastically in the presidential race. Grant won by a popular majority of over 760,00 and a 56 percent margin.  All but 3 of the 66 electoral votes pledged to him went to four minor candidates.

    The final factor that caused great suffering for Greeley was the loss of his wife. Greeley was then institutionalized and passed away from a breakdown of both his mind and body on November 29, 1872. Greeley passed before the electoral college met and all votes were cast. 

    Horace Greeley was a dedicated and progressive figure during the era of the Civil War. If it was not for him and his radical views, we may not have reached an end to the war. Horace Greeley was not only a journalism hero but an American hero. His influence still lives on in his writing and in the echoes of his ideals in writing we see today. If it wasn't for Greely and his vision for journalism and for America, we may not be where we are today.

Blog Post 4; The Press Starting Wars?

The Press Starting Wars?

    Why is it that throughout history we see the press silencing anti-war voices and instead, helping to spread false ideas about war?

    It first notably started in the Spanish-American War in 1898 when George Hearst of the New York Journal spoke to a Cuban photographer and said "you provide the pictures, I'll provide the war." Hearst then fabricated an entire slew of articles claiming that the Spanish were responsible for the sinking of the Navy ship, U.S.S Maine, to start a war, which it did. A war that started from the lies of the press. 

The Spanish never sunk that ship, but no 'true' conclusion was ever reached. 

    Even today we see the press fabricating and falsifying stories to incite war. The biggest example of this would be the war in Iraq where the press released stories saying that there were weapons of mass destruction from the United States military in Iraq because that's what the government claimed. 

There were never those kinds of weapons in Iraq. 

    It became very apparent very quickly to the public that large numbers of people lied, screwed up, or possibly both. 

    We see this over and over again. The press continuously feeds into what the government wants and creates stories filled with fallacies. Why? Why are anti-war voices constantly silenced and shoved away when all they try to do is deliver the truth? And why does the press get away with it?

    One way that we can see the ongoing relationship between the press and war is through the Vietnam War. Vietnam left the United States deeply divided and no one issue had been more bitterly divided than the media. However, this issue with the media was addressed by Richard Nixon at the end of the war. 

    He said, "The Vietnam War was complicated by factors that had never before occurred in America's conduct of war. The American news media had come to dominate domestic opinion about its purpose and conduct."

  Very quickly, it became widely accepted across the political spectrum that the relationship between the media and the government during Vietnam was one of conflict.

    From the Civil War up to today, the press has fed off of the fear of war. Fabricating and corrupting the truth as anti-war voices get pushed out. The issue of the role of the media and the press in modern American politics extends much farther than war. Events like the Civil Rights Movement, the Democratic Convention in Chicago, and even Watergate were all affected by the growing prominence of the media.

    These monumental events, along with others, have provoked a broader controversy about the relationship between the press to the institutions of the American government. There is a clear and distinct separation between media and the state.  

    Now that we've seen what the press has done with wars in the past, what will it look like if we let the press continue to falsify stories of war? If you ask me, I would say chaos. I believe America would be a country living off the lies of the media more than we do already. 

    Of course, journalists are always working to deliver 'aggressive' and inciteful reporting while holding people accountable, but is it really right to do that if the information is wrong? In recent years the press has continuously fallen into the president's trap. Some stories are legitimate, some are not. Other stories are generated by the falsehoods and exaggerations of the government. A lot of these issues stemmed from Trump's presidency. It became an all-out culture war that stretched well beyond journalistic operations. 

    Organized journalism is built around rules, traditions, and the careful articulation of words. Traditional politics is built around polling and the careful deployment of words, which are often drained of their meaning to avoid offenses. These two sides are joined in a mutually dependent relationship. 

    If this continues, anti-war voices are only silenced more. We will no longer be able to hear the truth about what is actually happening in our country or our world. Foreign policy will grow and the American government could lose its democracy and reach total world domination. Some professionals and scholars call this a "war on terror". 

    We need anti-war voices in the media to fight against political leaders who think they can get away with starting a war. We need these voices to deliver the truth. Everyone wants the truth and everyone (theoretically at least) wants peace. Yet there is no true designated source or group to support this. We must be active and vigilant citizens in questioning our government officials and what they say as well as the media. 

    The foundation of ethical nonviolence and anti-war advocacy relies on American citizens recognizing the value of their lives and understanding the interconnected social ties of those we have not met. 

    War, politics, and international tensions are some of the most prevalent topics in the news today. We are now living in an era bursting with historical moments and monumental possibilities. Political and cultural issues are changing in a drastic way and now more than ever, we need anti-war voices on the front page to deliver the truth.

    The issue of the press feeding into the lies of the government and the fear of the people throughout history is alarming. It is beyond concerning as an aspiring journalist to see this in our history. Where did the ethics and morals of journalists go during wartime? Why did they choose to listen to the government rather than dig for the truth? Would our country and war history look different now if the press had made better choices? I certainly think so. I believe the tight relationship the press has with the government during wartime is the main issue. They fed off of each other and made the entire matter worse.  

    It's critically important that as journalism students we recognize and learn from this history. If not, it's bound to happen again just like it is today with the tensions between Russia and Ukraine. We have to stop this and actively advocate against the voices in the press that fabricate, falsify, and exaggerate stories. We need to look to put these anti-war voices in the light. 

    No one likes war except for the people that benefit from it. As American citizens, it is our calling to do what is right for our country and today, more than ever, that calling should be for the truth. We need the truth in every story, article, or report on the news. The media is such a large part of our lives and to see the lying and exaggeration of events to the American people is troubling. 

    We must stop this and we must bring the voices of truth forward. 

Blog Post 3; EOTO 1 Presentation Reflections - Institutions

EOTO Presentation Reflection

     EOTOs, or Each One Teach One, gives us as students the opportunity to work with our classmates dig deeper into a topic as a group. After watching the groups present for our EOTOs, I found a few key takeaways from some specific presentation topics.

    The first topic I gained some new information from was The Boston News-Letter. I learned that the Boston News-Letter was extremely significant as it was one of the first successful newspapers in the colonies. It was first published in 1704. The Boston News-Letter also coined the term 'marketplace of ideas' which is still in use today.   

    One interesting thing I learned about the Boston News-Letter was their report on pirates. I thought

this was an interesting topic to report on, especially in 1700s America. Blackbeard the pirate was who they reported on specifically. I had to conduct some independent research, but I found that Blackbeard had been on mainland America for many years and also tortured most of the eastern coast. The report on him in the Boston News-Letter actually was published when he was killed in 1718.   

    The other interesting thing about the Boston-Globe that I think is really clever is how they allowed readers to leave comments on the paper and send it back to the editors. The editors would then take those comments or suggestions into consideration when writing the next paper. I think this method is really fascinating and useful. I'm sure not all comments they received were good or constructive, but I think it is a really clever concept and probably added to their success.

    Unfortunately, The Boston News-Letter was forcefully closed down 72 years later by the British.

    The second topic that I learned some new information from was The Chicago Tribune. The Chicago Tribune was founded in 1847 but went through multiple periods of bankruptcy about eight years after its founding. Thankfully, Joseph Medill came along and got the Tribune back to a financially stable position. Into the Civil War, the Tribune had very strong support for Lincoln and presented liberal idealism until 1899.

    One thing that makes the Chicago Tribune unique is that it had the first color printing press in 1901. This was monumental for the press. The Chicago Tribune was also the first American news source to report on foreign news.

    Fast forward to 2002, the Tribune was the first paper to release free tabloids to the public. Circling back to bankruptcy issues, the Tribune, along with many other businesses in 2008, filed for bankruptcy. This was a problem for the Tribune for many years until 2014 when the market stabilized.

    Two interesting things about the Tribune's history is that they were known for obtaining the Treaty of Versailles for the U.S. Senate and publishing a paper with the wrong presidential candidate. In 1941, the Tribune embarrassed themselves by printing thousands of copies of the paper announcing that Dewey had won the presidency. However, this was not the case and today we are left with this iconic photo of Truman.

    The third topic that I gained new information from was The New York Sun. Benjamin Day ran his own printing business in 1831 when two years later in 1833 he founded The New York Sun. The Sun was a part of the Penny Paper Era and mainly was inspired by the cholera outbreak to bring some positive news to people. Since The Sun was a penny paper, it was mainly supported by advertisers. The New York Sun covered topics ranging from divorce, crime, daily news and many more. It was one of many popular daily papers in New York.

    If you can notice the trend by now, all of these topics pertain to newspapers. That is not because I just like newspapers. It's because I found that all of these papers had one thing in common, The Associated Press. 

    The Associated Press is a non-profit news agency headquartered in New York. It was founded in 1846 and its members include a variety of newspapers and broadcasters such as the ones I've mentioned above. The Associated Press' mission is to advance the power of facts. Even today, the world still relies on AP to deliver the truth.

    All in all, I was able to see how journalism is connected throughout history. News is always happening, and it was fascinating to see how it has changed over time.