Newspapers and news, then and now

Bill Knight column for Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday, Sept. 18, 19 or 20

It was 233 years ago Thursday (Sept. 21) that the Pennsylvania Packet and Advertiser became the nation’s first successful daily newspaper. Also, this coming week (Sept. 25) marks the anniversary of America’s very first newspaper, Public Occurrences Both Foreign and Domestic, published in 1690. (It lasted four days before Boston officials shut it down because it “violated the public order.”)

Ten years ago, the 20th century newspaper industry was less worried about official sanctions than the Internet, and papers considered content that couldn’t be copied by the World Wide Web.

“Editors and news directors today fret about the Internet, as their predecessors worried about radio and TV, and all now see the huge threat the Web represents to the way they distribute their product,” said Mitchell Stephens in Columbia Journalism Review in 2007. “In a day when information pours out of digital spigots, stories that package painstakingly gathered facts on current events have lost much of their value.

“The extra value our quality news organizations can and must regularly add is analysis,” he added, “– thoughtful, incisive attempts to divine the significance of events – insights, not just information. What is required is, to choose a not very journalistic-sounding word, wisdom.”

Ideally, historically and currently, newspapers are a public trust – even if they operate as private enterprises. At their best, they offer ways for people to look at themselves, their community and world, to give voice to the voiceless and hold the powerful accountable, to cover city, state and national political or business campaigns, sports and the arts, keeping everyday folks in touch with their civic and cultural lives.

Former Illinois Gov. Adlai Stevenson, the Illinoisan who was the Democratic nominee for U.S. President twice in the 1950s and U.N. Ambassador in the ’60s, said, “The sources of information are the springs from which democracy drinks. A free society means a society based on free competition, and there is no more important competition than competition in ideas, competition in opinion.’

Weeks ago, President Trump condemned the press: “These are sick people … I really think they don't like our country.” Such constant criticism and dismissal of journalism as “fake news” may have an effect, according to a Fox News poll released Aug. 30, when 40 percent of respondents to the question of who “poses a greater threat to the United States,” said the news media. (At least more – 47 percent – listed white supremacists as a greater threat!)

Another progressive Illinoisan, the late, great U.S. Sen. (and former newspaperman) Paul Simon, wrote, “What is important is always a subjective judgment. The proclamation of the Declaration of Independence made page 2 of the Hartford Courant.”

Author and historian Sam Tanenhaus (“The Death of Conservatism”) this spring in The Atlantic wrote, “Implying that actual news is synonymous with truth is bound to be erroneous: In reality, journalism is the first, not final, draft of history – provisional, revisable, susceptible to mistakes and at times falsehoods, despite the efforts of even the most scrupulous reporters.”

Indeed, a  “kill the messenger” mentality affects attitudes toward a press that reports unpleasant facts or unwelcome comments. Second-guessing happens, too. As renowned journalist William Allen White said in 1908, “There are three things that no one can do to the entire satisfaction of anyone else: poke the fire, make love, and edit a newspaper.”

Nevertheless, most journalists try to be complete, fair and accurate, but it’s difficult-to-impossible to be absolutely objective. In fact, personal hero Heywood Broun – the New York columnist who founded the News Guild labor union in 1933 – wrote, “It has been said that the perfect reporter ought to be patterned more or less along the physical and chemical lines of a plate-glass window … in the hope that he will find the truth.

“I am not altogether certain these requirements are wise,” he continued. “I am not glass, either clear or opaque. When hit, the result is something other than ‘Tinkle! Tinkle!’ ”

Hopefully, the appreciation that most Americans who don’t see the press as a threat will prevail. After all, as it was sung by soul singers William Bell and Otis Redding, and rockers ranging from Jerry Lee Lewis to the Byrds, “You Don't Miss Your Water (‘Til the Well Runs Dry).”