Page 236 - Comparing Media Systems THREE MODELS OF MEDIA AND POLITICS

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The Three Models

The professionalization of journalism began, in some sense, when the
emerging commercial newspapers began to hire full-time paid reporters.
In the earliest years, these reporters were for the most part poorly paid
and low in status, and had little in the way of job security or autonomy.
There were exceptions; from fairly early on, there were star reporters
whose public reputations gave them bargaining power vis-` a-vis news-
paper owners. Henry Villiard, for example, agreed to work for James
Gordon Bennett’s Herald during the Civil War on the condition that he
would not be required to follow the paper’s anti-Lincoln politics (Kluger
1986: 99–100). But this was not typical. Ethical standards were low. Low
pay meant that reporters were tempted into corruption, and piece rates –
paymentbythecolumninch,forexample–temptedthemintosensation,
embellishment, and fabrication (Smythe 1980).
By the 1880s – a period when the notion of professionalism had grow-
ingprestigeinthewiderculture–therewasconsiderablediscussioninthe
United States of the need to professionalize journalism (Dicken-Garcia
1989; Marzolf 1991) and the perspective Siebert, Peterson, and Schramm
would later call the Social Responsibility Theory was articulated. This
tookplaceagainstthebackgroundofintensifiedcompetitioninthenews-
paper industry – this was the era of sensationalist “yellow journalism”–
and led to numerous proposals for reform, including proposals for en-
dowed, noncommercial newspapers and for licensing of journalists. The
first trade publications were started in the 1880s – The Journalist, News-
paperdom, Fourth Estate, and Editor and Publisher. The Columbia School
of Journalism was endowed in 1903 and opened in 1912, by which time
there were three professional schools of journalism and about a dozen
colleges and universities with journalism courses. In 1910 the Kansas
State Press Association (state press associations began in the 1850s, orig-
inallyassocialinstitutions)adoptedthefirstcodeofethics.TheAmerican
Society of Newspaper Editors was founded in 1923 and soon passed the
first national code of ethics. At the same time, specialist reporters were
beginning to establish professional communities, including most im-
portantly the Washington press corps. As Kernell (1986) shows, political
correspondents gradually came to see Washington reporting as a long-
term career. Many increased the stability of their careers by working for
multiple papers – thus becoming less dependent on particular employ-
ers. Their level of expertise increased, as did their orientation to their
peers and sources, rather than to their employers. Educational levels
of reporters gradually increased, as did the use of bylines identifying
individual reporters, which was standard by the mid-twentieth century.

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