Summary Of The Fall And Rise Of Partisan Journalism By Goughman

In “ The Fall and Rise of Partisan Journalism” by James L. Baughman, the author argues that a person does not have to have intellectual capabilities or higher education to realize that the American newspapers, especially those in the 19th century have been partisan in their reporting. This implies that the main purpose of the editorials in these newspapers were to compel people to share their views, recruit a following as well as ensure that those that read them stuck around. Therefore, these newspapers exercised the inherent power of the press to create situations that would retain readership rather than to offer eloquently and factual articles, for instance, such newspapers would not report news that would flatter the opposition.The reason for this partisanship is attributed to economics as it has been proven that the newspapers engaged in business with parties, the government or the Congress amongst other bodies that greatly subsidized their operations.

Despite this, there are other scholars that believe that newspapers affiliated to political parties are desirable as they facilitate party participation amongst voters.On a different note, scholar such as Thomas C. Leonard believe that by being objective, there is a higher chance that an incisive examination of the politicians leaves the voters to be directionless as they tend to ignore the significance of the electoral process. Yet, other scholars such as Baldasty argue that it is not possible to attain responsible and non-partisan journalism as envisaged by Bleyer as the current crop of journalists are trained in new journalism schools that cannot be compared with those in the nineteenth