A View from Somewhere

The Making and Unmaking of the Age of Professional Journalism

Now how is this network news determined? A small group of men, numbering perhaps no more than a dozen anchormen, commentators, and executive producers, settle upon the 20 minutes or so of film and commentary that's to reach the public. ... The American people would rightly not tolerate this concentration of power in Government. Is it not fair and relevant to question its concentration in the hands of a tiny, enclosed fraternity of privileged men elected by no one and enjoying a monopoly sanctioned and licensed by Government? The views of the majority of this fraternity do not — and I repeat, not — represent the views of America.

— Spiro Agnew, November 13, 1969

A week after President Richard Nixon delivered a major address declaring a need for national unity in the midst of the Vietnam War, Vice President Spiro Agnew staged an event in Des Moines, Iowa, to call for "more responsible" journalism. In Agnew's view, television news commentators' reactions to Nixon's speech had been laced with negativity, skepticism, and elite condescension directed against not only the president but, even more disturbingly, the people who had elected him. Such skewed coverage, as Agnew saw it, was quite typical of the unelected "privileged fraternity" of professional journalists despite their claims to professional objectivity. Agnew painted a portrait of the world of professional journalism, especially on the national television networks, as antidemocratic and mired in its own form of urbane provinciality. Agnew was certainly not the only critic of the dominant news institutions and their professional routines during the social and political upheavals of the late sixties. In fact, professional journalism claims to objectivity came under fire not only from a new wave of conservatives fomenting backlash against the era's social movements, but also from many leaders and participants in those left-leaning social movements. Many movement participants charged that the press largely represented established power and its values, and some saw it as stained by the biases of a workforce dominated by middle-class white men. Although it is hard not to sense in Agnew's critique a rhetorical maneuver favoring his own political agenda, many of the themes he sounded against news outlets in this speech continued to strike a chord over the following decades. Professional journalism, according to Agnew, fostered elitism, insularity, and alienation from everyday citizens and consumers, and it disguised its own biases' untenable claims to objectivity.

The following chapters will explore models for journalism that have been reacting against the professional journalism that reached its apex in the post-World War II period in the United States. This chapter explores how professional journalism came to take on a particular institutional, stylistic, and ideological form and the social, economic, and political forces that led to a crisis of that hegemonic form by the 1970s. The process of establishing journalism as a profession has been a contentious one. It has also been an object of fascination for many journalism historians, especially those who have heeded, in one way or another, James Carey's influential call for a cultural history that would approach journalism as "a highly particular type of consciousness, a particular organization of social experience" At the forefront of historical accounts of the professionalization of journalism have been questions about the origins of the ideal of journalistic "objectivity," the defining value of twentieth-century professional journalism in the United States. How did a voice claiming the status of a nonbiased observer come to dominate the news industry's organization of social experience? Objectivity was a key notion that enabled news organizations to claim an authority to tell the story of the world's goings-on from a position above the fray of politics and clashes among particular points of view. Objectivity promised to ground journalistic discourse as a way of knowing that could be distinguished from political advocacy and public relations.

Many historians have offered rich accounts of the rise of journalistic objectivity and professionalization, so this chapter proceeds differently from those that follow. My goal here is to offer what Kathy Roberts Forde calls a "synthetic history "— a weaving together of various historical accounts — of the rise of professionalism and objectivity and an overview of factors that led to a shaken confidence in professionalism by the 1970s. Journalism's professional ideals have particular histories; they are not commandments that were once handed down from the heavens or rules inscribed by founders of modern democracy. Yet even among working journalists, this historical memory can easily be lost. When journalistic standards appear eternal, they also seem immutable. Even when there is a willing attitude to reimagine how journalism should be practiced — as there is today among bloggers, entrepreneurs, and others — knowing something about the conditions in which professionalism arose can help assess contemporary alternatives to it.

Exactly how to explain the rise of objectivity has been an area of disagreement among researchers and historians. This is true even among the historians influenced by cultural and social historical approaches to understanding journalism that were inspired by fresh ideas offered by James Carey and Michael Schudson in the 1970s. Much of the disagreement regarding the origins of objectivity, I argue, has more to do with highlighting different points of emphasis rather than irreconcilable hypotheses. Nonetheless, these differences in emphasis are important. Some historians have asked how objectivity and professional norms resonated with cultural sensibilities of news audiences. Others have focused on the role journalists themselves played in transforming their craft into a profession. Still others focus on political or economic structures that can account for the shift toward professionalization. Disputes over which of these factors to prioritize matter to the extent that the genealogy of professionalism and objectivity can help reveal some of its current social functions and the kinds of alternatives it displaces. These are also disputes over historical memory. Accounts of professionalization that emphasize the role it played in supporting dominant power might be criticized as expressions of a conspiratorial mindset; more positive accounts of the origins of objectivity might be criticized for expressing the biases of liberal pluralism and neglecting power and hegemony.

The historical literature on professionalism and objectivity supports a view that acknowledges many cultural, economic, and political...