The Power of the Press: The Birth of American Political Reporting
by Thomas C. Leonard
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Description
Many books have shown that journalists have political power, but none have offered a more wide-ranging account of how they got it. The Power of the Press is a pioneering look at the birth of political journalism. Before the American Revolution, Thomas Leonard notes, the press in the colonies was a timid enterprise, poorly protected by law and shy of government. Newspapers helped make the Revolution, but they were not fully aware of the way they could fit into a democracy. It was only in the show more nineteenth century that journalists learned to tell the stories and supply the pictures that made politics a national preoccupation. Leonard traces the rise of political reporting through some fascinating corridors of American history: the exposes of the Revolutionary era, the "unfeeling accuracy" of Congressional reporting, the role of the New York Times and Harper's Weekly in attacking New York City's infamous Tweed Ring, and the emergence of "muckraking" at the beginning of our century. The increasing power of the press in the political arena has been a double-edged sword, Leonard argues. He shows that while political reporting nurtured the broad interest in politics that made democracy possible, this journalism became a threat to political participation. About the Author: Thomas C. Leonard is Associate Professor of Journalism at the University of California at Berkeley, and author of Above the Battle: War-Making in America from Appomattax to Versailles.--Publisher description. show lessTags
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5+ Works 174 Members
Thomas C Leonard is research scholar in the Council of the Humanities at Princeton University, where he is also lecturer in the Department of Economics.
Classifications
- Genres
- Nonfiction, History
- DDC/MDS
- 071.3 — Computer science, information & general works News media, journalism & publishing Journalism and newspapers in North America United States
- LCC
- PN4888 .P6 .L46 — Language and Literature Literature (General) Literature (General) Journalism. The periodical press, etc. By region or country
- BISAC
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- 14
- Popularity
- 1,673,060
- Rating
- (5.00)
- Languages
- English
- Media
- Paper, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 6
