Synopses & Reviews
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 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.
Review
"The most perceptive and provocative study of the history of the press to appear in some years.... An intelligent and powerful way to think about that central but elusive topic, the power of the press."--Michael Schudson, The Philadelphia Inquirer. "An important and radically new history of American political journalism.... Splendid."--Los Angeles Times. "A stimulating and imaginative interpretive history.... Scholars of muckraking should find his analysis of the first investigative journalists fascinating.... Offers journalism historians a book that they and their students can argue with, and learn from."--Journalism History.
Synopsis
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 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.