Alaska News

Cyber-news pendulum swings back toward the personal

In 1735 one of the most respected attorneys in the American colonies, Andrew Hamilton, defended John Peter Zenger, a New York City newspaper publisher, in one of the most famous libel cases in American history. Zenger had criticized New York's colonial governor in the pages of his New York Weekly Journal. The government's lawyer argued that "government is a sacred thing," and in the interest of its authority, upon which public order depended, it ought not to be brought publicly into disrepute.

Hamilton argued that the sanctity of government did not place it above criticism, a superiority that would invite tyranny. Criticism that could be proven to be true, Hamilton averred, should not be called libel.

The jury agreed, and the Zenger case became a cornerstone of American free speech.

Zenger had imported an innovation from Joseph Addison and Richard Steele's Spectator, launched in London in 1711. Until the advent of The Spectator, English and colonial newspapers generally carried only official government pronouncements, and sometimes legislative debates. Addison and Steele enlivened the forum by adding editorial comment, often as satire.

In 1765, before the American Revolution, John Adams wrote in the Boston Gazette, that "liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people, who have ... a right, an indisputable, unalienable, indefeasible, divine right to that most dreaded and envied kind of knowledge, I mean the characters and conduct of their rulers."

After the Revolution, several newspapers became organs of the new American government. Most famously, the Gazette of the United States was the mouthpiece of Alexander Hamilton, eminence grise of the Federalist party. Logically enough, opposition papers soon arose, including the National Gazette, edited by Phillip Freneau for Thomas Jefferson, the administration's bitterest critic.

For much of their subsequent history, newspapers have been the editorial voice of supporters or critics of government, exercising the tradition of freedom. As presses became less expensive and more portable, individuals found newspapers to be a potent vehicle for disgruntled critiques of politics, society and the arts. The critiques often included personal attacks rendered with vituperation, invective, and much we would now call slander.

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In 1789 there were 92 newspapers in the United States. As settlement moved swiftly across the Appalachians and through the hinterland, their number grew to 1,200 by 1835.

Later, with the advent of the telegraph and such centralized wire services as the Associated Press and United Press International, publishing became even easier. Early newspapers in Alaska, for example, consisted of several pages of wire service stories and features, with a half-page of local events.

Perhaps inevitably, the newspaper as personal diatribe generated a more objective alternative. Such editors as Horace Greeley, James Gordon Bennett and Henry Raymond strove for a disinterested combination of investigative, corroborated reporting, and measured editorial commentary based on facts. This ultimately became the standard against which news publications would be judged.

The Gilded Age "yellow journalism" of Joseph Pulitzer's New York World and William Randolph Hearst's New York Journal, both of which utilized scandal-mongering, sensationalism and jingoism to drive up circulation, can be viewed as a momentary departure from the growing stature of the more objective standard.

Taking this standard perhaps to its apotheosis, The New York Times emerged in the post-World War II era as the country's unofficial "paper of record," referred to as the "Gray Lady" of the industry because it emphasized text with relatively few photographs. Most modern major regional papers modeled themselves on that standard, and earned public and professional respect to the degree to which they met it.

The transformation of news providers in the current cyber-age takes us back somewhat to the age of personal journalism. Today's bloggers often resemble the colorful, parading public critic more than the measured editor of the mid-20th century who insisted on corroboration and balance.

It is unclear how online publication will affect the character of today's mainline papers.

The current search for a cyber-standard for conveying news and editorial comment is a dynamic new challenge in a time-honored profession. We're seeing a chapter Andrew Hamilton and John Adams would likely watch with bemusement, and perhaps a little trepidation.

Stephen Haycox is a professor of history at the University of Alaska Anchorage.

Steve Haycox

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Steve Haycox

Steve Haycox is professor emeritus of history at the University of Alaska Anchorage.

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