Progressivism and the Rise of the Mass Media
Newspapers and Magazines Helped Shape American Public Opinion
- Aug 13, 2009
- Michael Streich
- Muckraker Ida M. Tarbell - Library of Congress: Public Domain Image
The late 19th century saw many changes affecting American social, cultural, and political life. Industrial expansion, improvements in transportation and communication, and growing consumerism helped to shape middle class values and, most importantly, how Americans thought. In this, the role of the emerging mass media cannot be understated. For good and for ill, newspapers and magazines helped drive Americans to war, demand safer urban environments, and give teeth to the Progressive Movement of the early 20th century.
The Changing Role of Newspapers
Newspapers had always existed, beginning in the Colonial period. The Peter Zenger case was perhaps the first victory for freedom of the press. But even in early years, newspapers figured prominently to incite readers, whether it was a distorted story of the Boston Massacre, outright lies defaming Andrew Jackson, political cartoons that helped to bring down “Boss Tweed,” or scurrilous stories discrediting Samuel Tilden in the 1876 election.
The value of newspapers wasn’t lost on Abraham Lincoln, who purchased German newspaper publishers in order to sway an important voting immigrant block in the 1860 election. By 1870, 459 daily newspapers were in circulation, subscribed to by 2.6 million readers. By 1900, however, newspaper circulation had risen to 1,967 dailies with 15 million subscriptions.
Industrialization had made printing more efficient, allowing papers to reach more people at a much lower production cost. This competition, however, led to changes in newspaper writing as well as issue focus. By the last decade of the 19th century, several prominent papers, like the New York World, were engaging in “yellow journalism.” The yellow press featured highly sensational stories designed to attract large public readership.
Yellow Journalism and the Spanish-American War
The treatment of Cubans following the 1895 uprising was brutal. American newspapers, however, under the leadership of men like William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer, grossly exaggerated the Spanish response, in some cases writing inflammatory stories that had no basis in fact. Yet the constant barrage of newspaper accounts changed American public opinion. When Congress declared war, the “Splendid Little War” became the most popular conflict in American history.
Magazines and Muckrakers
The 1879 Postal Act, creating a separate, “second class” postage fee that, in 1885, was amended to one cent per pound, enabled magazines to reach American homes. Low production costs, again a product of industrial innovation, allowed publishers to slash cover prices.
Magazines, responding to the emerging Progressive Movement, began to publish serialized articles by muckrakers like Ida M. Tarbell, Lincoln Steffens, and Ray Stannard Baker. The term muckraker came from John Bunyan’s 1678 book, Pilgrim’s Progress, and was coined by President Theodore Roosevelt to describe the investigative journalism of these writers.
Tarbell exposed the oil empire of John D. Rockefeller, describing in lurid detail the plutocrat’s business history that led to the monopoly called Standard Oil. Steffens’ Shame of the Cities exposed urban political corruption. Yet it was Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, first serialized in a California pro-social newspaper, which prompted Congress to pass meaningful legislation regulating meat packing in the Pure Food and Drug Act.
The Media Changes with the Culture
Hundreds of copy-cat muckrakers eventually turned the public against the seemingly unending stories of corruption and social ills. World War I saw the mass media kidnapped by President Wilson’s extensive pro-war propaganda campaign. Once the war was over, newspapers and magazines were addressing the Roaring Twenties. Bruce Blevin, writing in The New Republic on September 9, 1925, tells his readers about the lifestyle of flappers in his interview with “Flapper Jane.” Investigative journalism was dead, at least for the time of the twenties.
Sources:
- Joseph E. Gould, Challenge and Change: Guided Readings in American History (New York: Harcourt Brace Janovich, Inc., 1969)
- Richard Hofstadter, The Progressive Movement 1900-1915 Prentice Hall, 1963)
- Page Smith, The Rise of Industrial America: A People’s History of the Post-Reconstruction Era (Penguin Books, 1984)
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