Centralizing communications
The telegraph transformed many nations
I can send such clear orders
To my colonial borders
And boost epic real-time wealth creation
Carey writes about the telegraph changing the news and speaks to how the unlimited distance of the wire service created a need for “objective news”. The word limits of the telegraph required only the barest facts to be conveyed, leaving the majority of the article to be fleshed out in the newsroom by people who were not present for the event. This form of editorial flexibility leads to a curious sense of “objective” journalism. If readers labor under the view that they are getting the absolute facts because the root content is the same from paper to paper, it forces news outlets to bury their biases even deeper.
It made me think of current movements in the blogosphere where people cite news articles or report on events directly and openly acknowledge their biases. Now that we live in a time where people have such free access to generating their own content and opinions about shared ‘news’, readers are more active critical thinkers and conscientious writers have found it expedient to divulge as much of their own bias as possible up front. While on one hand, this is a boon for readers, there is still a substantial schism between this amateur reporting and the professionally vetted news institutions. However, the sheer volume of contributors makes it extremely difficult to isolate the information that one would care about and verify that the source of the material is legitimate. In viewing this commentary through this lens, it becomes almost laughable to think that objective news reporting is even possible, especially through a fifty word telegraph.
Many journalism historians would argue that he has contributed greatly to their field, but Carey's attributing the development of "objective" journalism to the telegraph is a pretty extreme oversimplification. There was a lot going on around that time that contributed, the most important element being the advent of printing advertisements in papers. Until the 1820s and '30s they had all been funded by political parties, so they unabashedly presented the ideas of those parties. Once papers began funding themselves through advertising, it behooved them to appeal to the broadest possible (i.e. non-partisan) audience. The telegraph, in some cases like the wire services, increased the size and geographical dispersal of the audience greatly, but it hardly acting alone to create a politically neutral journalism.
ReplyDeleteAs you point out, there are now a plethora of quasi-news voices out there, but institutionalized news outlets still have a kind of cred with audiences that has been difficult to fully emulate. I've heard it proposed that these institutions may take on a a more aggregator/curator role in the future; they would sift through content being generated by freelancers, bloggers, etc., and lend their institutional cred to them by presenting them as trustworthy. That way they would save a lot of money by not paying as many reporters. This doesn't really solve the problem that most bloggers and non-legacy outlets do not do original reporting, but it's an interesting possibility.
Thank you Acacia for the thought-provoking post. I am interested in your discussion regarding "objective journalism". While I agree with you that the overloading amount of news online publications make it difficult to separate and legitimate information, it could also be argued that (1) any journalist is biased, displaying a personal interpretation of 'the facts', even if in a sophisticated way.. though I do appreciate that credible journalists may be more careful about researching multiple perspectives and verifying sources; and (2) I believe that people know the difference between an amateur blogger journalist and a paid professional at a daily newspaper, such as The NY Times. ...I just wonder whether that consciousness is being applied to reading and writing choices on a daily basis. Does the cultural shift in communication delivery and consumption deriving from new technologies mean a deterioration in human development? I don't know, but would love to hear people's input about the 'new journalism'.
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