Partisan Journalism: A History of Media Bias in the United States - Communication, Media, and Politics

Marc Notes: Originally published: 2014.; Includes bibliographical references and index.; In this work, Jim A. Kuypers guides readers on a journey through American journalistic history, focusing on the warring notions of objectivity and partisanship. This book steps beyond a simple charge-counter-charge of political bias in the news in that it offers an argument that the press in America, except for a brief period, was essentially partisan from its inception, has returned with a vengeance to its original roots and that this new development may actually be healthy for American democracy. Review Quotes: In Partisan Journalism: A History of Media Bias in the United States, Jim Kuypers has written one of those rare books that is designed to actually stimulate thought among scholars, news professionals and the news reading/viewing (and now tweeting and blogging) public. His analysis of the origins, rise, variations and modern incarnations of the partisan press is both scrupulously detailed and wittily pointed. More than just a history or a critique, Kuypers explains and contextualizes events, ideas and people who shaped our modern media world. The book will I hope incite controversy and counter-argument and thus spur a renewed debate on what constitutes a free and fair press in a representative republic.--David D. Perlmutter, Dean and Professor of the College of Media & Communication, Texas Tech University, and author of Blogwars: The New Political Battleground"Biographical Note: Jim A. Kuypers is an associate professor of communication at Virginia Tech. He is the author or editor of nine books, including Twentieth Century Roots of Rhetorical Studies, Bush s War: Media Bias and Justifications for War in the Terrorist Age and Rhetorical Criticism: Perspectives in Action. He is a former editor for the American Communication Journal. He is the recipient of the American Communication Association s Outstanding Contribution to Communication Scholarship Award, the Southern States Communication Association s Early Career Research Award, and Dartmouth College s Distinguished Lecturer Award. His research interests include meta-criticism, the moral/poetic use of language, and political communication, particularly ways that the news media influence political understanding"Table of Contents: Preface Acknowledgments Introduction Chapter 1. The Rise of a Partisan Press: News was not always News Chapter 2. Profits, Partisanship, and a War: The Revolution in Journalism Chapter 3. A Golden Age of Objective Journalism? Chapter 4. Three Presidents and a War Chapter 5. Beyond Nixon: Growth of the Partisan Press Chapter 6. Pushing Their Polls Chapter 7. The Rise of the Alternate News Media in Radio and Internet Chapter 8. Journalistic Values and Biased Reporting Chapter 9. The Clinton Manipulation and a Declining Press Chapter 10. Bush and Election 2000: We Spin, You Figure It Out Chapter 11. Obama 2008 and the Contemporary Establishment News Media Chapter 12. The 2010 and 2012 Elections"Publisher Marketing: In Partisan Journalism: A History of Media Bias in the United States, Jim A. Kuypers guides readers on a journey through American journalistic history, focusing on the warring notions of objectivity and partisanship. Kuypers shows how the American journalistic tradition grew from partisan roots and, with only a brief period of objectivity in between, has returned to those roots today. The book begins with an overview of newspapers during Colonial times, explaining how those papers openly operated in an expressly partisan way; he then moves through the Jacksonian era s expansion of both the press and its partisan nature. After detailing the role of the press during the War Between the States, Kuypers demonstrates that it was the telegraph, not professional sentiment, that kicked off the movement toward objective news reporting. The conflict between partisanship and professionalization/objectivity continued through the muckraking years and through World War II, with newspapers in the 1950s often being objective in their reporting even as their editorials leaned to the right. This changed rapidly in the 1960s when newspaper editorials shifted from right to left, and progressive advocacy began to slowly erode objective content. Kuypers follows this trend through the early 1980s, and then turns his attention to demonstrating how new communication technologies have changed the very nature of news writing and delivery. In the final chapters covering the Bush and Obama presidencies, he traces the growth of the progressive and partisan nature of the mainstream news, while at the same time explores the rapid rise of alternative news sources, some partisan, some objective, that are challenging the dominance of the mainstream press. This book steps beyond a simple charge-counter-charge of political bias in the news in that it offers an argument that the press in America, except for a brief period, was essentially partisan from its inception and has returned with a vengeance to its original roots. The final argument presented in the book is that this new development may actually be healthy for American Democracy."

Contributor Bio:  Kuypers, Jim A Edwin Black is the award-winning, New York Times and international investigative author of 80 bestselling editions in 14 languages in 61 countries, as well as scores of newspaper and magazine articles in the leading publications of the United States, Europe and Israel. With a million books in print, his work focuses on genocide and hate, corporate criminality and corruption, governmental misconduct, academic fraud, philanthropy abuse, oil addiction, alternative energy and historical investigation. Editors have submitted Black's work nine times for Pulitzer Prize nomination, and in recent years he has been the recipient of a series of top editorial awards. He has also contributed to a number of anthologies worldwide. For his work, Black has been interviewed on hundreds of network broadcasts from Oprah, the Today Show, CNN Wolf Blitzer Reports and NBC Dateline in the US to the leading networks of Europe and Latin American. His works have been the subject of numerous documentaries, here and abroad. All of his books have been optioned by Hollywood for film, with three in active production. His latest film is the screen adaptation War Against the Weak, based on his book of the same name. Black's speaking tours include hundreds of events in dozens of cities each year, appearing at prestigious venues from the Library of Congress in Washington to the Simon Wiesenthal Institute in Los Angeles in America, and in Europe from London's British War Museum and Amsterdam's Institute for War Documentation to Munich's Carl Orff Hall. He is the editor of The Cutting Edge News, which receives more than 1.5 million visits monthly. Black's ten award-winning bestselling books are IBM and the Holocaust (2001), British Petroleum and the Redline Agreement (2011), The Farhud (2010), Nazi Nexus (2009), The Plan (2008), Internal Combustion (2006), Banking on Baghdad (2004), War Against the Weak (2003), The Transfer Agreement (1984), and a 1999 novel, Format C: . His enterprise and investigative writings have appeared in scores of newspapers from the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune to the Sunday Times of London, Frankfurter Zeitung and the Jerusalem Post, as well as scores of magazines as diverse as Playboy, Sports Illustrated, Reform Judaism, Der Spiegel, L'Express, BusinessWeek and American Bar Association Journal. Black's articles are syndicated worldwide by Los Angeles Times Syndicate International, Los Angeles Times-Washington Post Syndicate, JTA and Feature Group News Service.