Stoicism and Courage as Journalistic Values: What Early Journalism Textbooks Taught About Newsroom Ethos

Abstract

Discussion of a “newsroom ethos” that may direct journalists into harm’s way and also impede their ability to receive help in coping with the after-effects of their work experiences has become more common as researchers have focused on the mental-health risks faced by reporters and photographers. Journalism textbooks covering a period from 1913–78 were found to have encouraged detachment and discouraged the displaying of emotions in what was depicted as a macho profession. Aspiring journalists were taught that courage was an important attribute because taking risks was part of the job and that some of the most influential journalists had died heroic deaths in their pursuit of the truth. Textbook writers helped developed a true mythology around journalists, one replete with heroes and legends.

Notes

1 Anthony Depalma, “Suffering in Silence,” Columbia Journalism Review 47, no. 6 (2009): 46.

2 Hal Himmelstein and E. Perry Faithorn, “Eyewitness to Disaster: How Journalists Cope with the Psychological Stress Inherent in Reporting Traumatic Events,” Journalism Studies 3, no. 4 (2002): 537.

3 Cindy Elmore, “Recollections in Hindsight from Women Who Left: The Gendered Newsroom Culture,” Women & Language 30, no. 2 (2007): 21.

4 Richard W. Scott, Institutions and Organizations, 2nd ed. (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2001), 7.

5 John Soloski, “News Reporting and Professionalism: Some Constraints on the Reporting of the News,” in Social Meanings of News: A Text-reader, ed. Daniel A. Berkowitz (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1997) 138.

6 Raphael Cohen-Almagor, “The Limits of Objective Reporting,” Journal of Language & Politics 7, no. 1 (2008): 137; Mitchell Stephens, A History of News: From the Drum to the Satellite (New York: Viking, 1988), 184.

7 “A Newspaper Code,” New York Times, April 29, 1923, 2.

8 Richard Keeble, Ethics for Journalists (London: Routledge, 2001), 130.

9 Fred Fedler, “Insiders’ Stories: Coping with Newsroom Stress: An Historical Perspective,” American Journalism 21, no. 3 (2004): 77.

10 Warren Breed, “Social Control in the Newsroom: A Functional Analysis,” Social Forces 33, no. 4 (1955): 328.

11 Thomas S. Kuhn and Ian Hacking, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 4th ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012), 11.

12 Keeble, Ethics for Journalists, 130.

13 William M. Sattler, “Conception of Ethos in Ancient Rhetoric,” Speech Monographs 14, no. 1 (1947): 55.

14 Harold L. Wilensky, “The Professionalization of Everyone?,” American Journal of Sociology 70, no. 2 (1964): 143.

15 Paul J. DiMaggio and Walter W. Powell, “The Iron Cage Revisited: Institutional Isomorphism and Collective Rationality in Organizational Fields,” American Sociological Review 48, no. 2 (1983): 153.

16 Ibid.

17 John W. Meyer and Brian Rowan, “Institutionalized Organizations: Formal Structure as Myth and Ceremony,” American Journal of Sociology 83, no. 2 (1977): 347.

18 Ibid., 340.

19 Ibid., 349.

20 Scott, Institutions and Organizations, 7.

21 Ibid.

22 William David Sloan, “Neutrality and Colonial Newspapers,” in Fair & Balanced: A History of Journalistic Objectivity, edited by Steven R. Knowlton and Karen L. Freeman (Northport, AL: Vision Press, 2005), 38.

23 Gaye Tuchman, “Objectivity as Strategic Ritual: An Examination of Newsmen’s Notions of Objectivity,” American Journal of Sociology 77, no. 4 (1972): 660.

24 Wilensky, “The Professionalization of Everyone?,” 141.Wilensky studied eighteen professions, including engineering, law, and medicine, but not journalism.

25 David T. Z. Mindich, Just the Facts: How “Objectivity” Came to Define American Journalism (New York: New York University Press, 1998), 1.

26 Randall Patnode, Donald L. Shaw, and Steven Knowlton, “The 19th Century: The Evolution of Objectivity,” in Fair & Balanced: A History of Journalistic Objectivity, edited by Steven R. Knowlton and Karen L. Freeman (Northport, AL: Vision Press, 2005), 67.

27 Ibid.

28 Mindich, Just the Facts, 8.

29 Mitchell Stephens and Jerry Lanson, Writing and Reporting the News (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1986), quoted in Mindich, Just the Facts: How “Objectivity” Came to Define American Journalism, 8.

30 Melvin Mencher, News Reporting and Writing, 6th ed. (Madison, WI: WCB Brown & Benchmark Publishers, 1994), quoted in Mindich, Just the Facts, 8.

31 Mindich, Just the Facts, 8.

32 Mencher, News Reporting and Writing, quoted in Mindich, Just the Facts, 8.

33 Mitchell Stephens, Broadcast News, 3rd ed. (Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1993), quoted in Mindich, Just the Facts: How “Objectivity” Came to Define American Journalism, 8.

34 Joseph A. Mirando, “Embracing Objectivity Early On: Journalism Textbooks of the 1800s,” Journal of Mass Media Ethics 16, no. 1 (2001): 25.

35 Randall S. Sumpter, “Core Knowledge,” Journalism History 35, no. 1 (2009): 42.

36 Matt J. Duffy, “Anonymous Sources: A Historical Review of the Norms Surrounding Their Use,” American Journalism 31, no. 2 (2014): 236–61; Will Mari, “‘Bright and Inviolate’: Editorial–Business Divides in Early Twentieth-century Journalism Textbooks,” American Journalism 31, no. 3 (2014): 378–99.

37 Will Mari, “An Enduring Ethos,” Journalism Practice 9, no. 5 (2015): 687.

38 Maureen H. Beasley and Joseph A. Mirando, “Objectivity in Education,” in Fair & Balanced: A History of Journalistic Objectivity, edited by Steven R. Knowlton and Karen L. Freeman (Northport, AL: Vision Press, 2005), 186.

39 Hazel Dicken-Garcia, “The Transition from the Partisan to the Penny Press,” in Fair & Balanced: A History of Journalistic Objectivity, edited by Steven R. Knowlton and Karen L. Freeman (Northport, AL: Vision Press, 2005), 90.

40 Keeble, Ethics for Journalists, 130.

41 Andrew Haeg, “A Search for ‘True’ Empathy in Reporting,” John S. Knight Journalism Fellowships at Stanford, October 22, 2012, http://jsk.stanford.edu/news-notes/2012/a-search-for-true-empathy-in-reporting/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=a-search-for-true-empathy-in-reporting; Marc Herman, “Why reporting on refugee crises requires empathy for mental health issues,” Columbia Journalism Review, July 6, 2016.

42 Fedler, “Insiders’ Stories: Coping with Newsroom Stress: An Historical Perspective,” 92.

43 Ibid., 77.

44 Elmore, “Recollections in Hindsight from Women Who Left: The Gendered Newsroom Culture,” 21.

45 Janet Blank-Libra, “Compassion Is Not Journalism’s Downfall, It’s Journalism’s Salvation,” October 26, 2012, http://www.poynter.org/2012/compassion-is-not-journalisms-downfall-its-journalisms-salvation/193090/.

46 Erving Goffman, Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1963), 1.

47 US Department of Health and Human Services, Mental Health: A Report of the Surgeon General – Executive Summary (Rockville, MD: US Department of Health and Human Services, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, Center for Mental Health Services, National Institutes of Health, National Institute of Mental Health, 1999).

48 Kenji Klein, “Institutional Change in the Face of Resistance: Unthinkable, Identity, and Entrepreneurship” (PhD diss., University of California, Irvine, 2012).

49 Lynne G. Zucker, “The Role of Institutionalization in Cultural Persistence,” American Sociological Review 42, no. 5 (1977): 741.

50 Lynne G. Zucker, “Organizations as Institutions,” Research in the Sociology of Organizations 2 (1983): 25.

51 Meyer and Rowan, “Institutionalized Organizations: Formal Structure as Myth and Ceremony,” 357.

52 W. Richard Scott, “Approaching Adulthood: The Maturing of Institutional Theory,” Theory and Society 37, no. 5 (2008): 432.

53 Meyer and Rowan, “Institutionalized Organizations: Formal Structure as Myth and Ceremony,” 341.

54 Ibid., 358.

55 Paul M. Hirsch and Y.S. Bermiss, “Institutional ‘Dirty’ Work: Preserving Institutions through Strategic Decoupling,” in Institutional Work: Actors and Agency in Institutional Studies of Organizations, edited by Thomas B. Lawrence, Roy Suddaby, and Bernard Leca (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 273.

56 Michael Delucchi, “Staking a Claim: The Decoupling of Liberal Arts Mission Statements from Baccalaureate Degrees Awarded in Higher Education,” Sociological Inquiry 70, no. 2 (2000): 157.

57 “Carnegie-Knight Task Force,” Harvard Kennedy School, Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy, https://shorensteincenter.org/research-publications/carnegie-knight-initiative/.

58 These studies included: Duffy, “Anonymous Sources: A Historical Review of the Norms Surrounding Their Use,” 236–61; Mari, “’Bright and Inviolate’: Editorial–Business Divides in Early Twentieth-century Journalism Textbooks,” 378–99; Mari, “An Enduring Ethos,” 687–703; Joseph Andrew Mirando, “Journalism by the Book: An Interpretive Analysis of News Writing and Reporting Textbooks, 1867–1987” (PhD diss., University of Southern Mississippi, 1992); Linda Steiner, “Construction of Gender in Newsreporting Textbooks 1890–1990,” Journalism Monographs (October 1992): 135, 1–47; and Sumpter, “Core Knowledge,” 42–51.

59 Gretchen Dworznik and Max Grubb, “Preparing for the Worst: Making a Case for Trauma Training in the Journalism Classroom,” Journalism & Mass Communication Educator 62, no. 2 (2007): 191.

60 Linda Steiner, “Construction of Gender in Newsreporting Textbooks 1890–1990,” 1–47.

61 Willard Grosvernor Bleyer, Newspaper Writing and Editing (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1913), v.

62 Beasley and Mirando, “Objectivity in Education,” 184.

63 Grant Milnor Hyde, “Foreward,” in New Survey of Journalism, 3rd ed., edited by George Fox Mott (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1953), ix.

64 Ibid.

65 Ibid., 45.

66 Ibid., 156.

67 Ibid., 139.

68 Ibid., 248.

69 Ibid., 115.

70 “A Newspaper Code,” 2.

71 Leon Nelson Flint, The Conscience of the Newspaper: A Case Book in the Principles and Problems of Journalism (New York: D. Appleton, 1925), 281.

72 Ibid., 385.

73 Ibid., 281.

74 Ibid., 393–94.

75 Ibid., 262–63.

76 Carl. N. Warren, News Reporting: A Practice Book (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1929), 54.

77 Ibid., 59.

78 Ibid., 63.

79 Ibid., 202.

80 Frederick John Mansfield, The Complete Journalist: A Study of the Principles and Practice of Newspaper-making (London: Sir Isaac Pitman & Sons, 1935), 126.

81 Ibid., 128.

82 William Earl Hall, Reporting News (Boston: D.C. Heath and Company, 1936), 384

83 Ibid.

84 Ibid., 388.

85 Ibid., 387, 388.

86 Curtis Daniel MacDougall, Interpretative Reporting (New York: Macmillan, 1938), 57.

87 Ibid., 69.

88 Helen MacGill Hughes, News and the Human Interest Story (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1940), 95.

89 Robert Miller Neal, News Gathering and News Writing, 2nd ed. (New York: Prentice-Hall, 1949), 277–78.

90 Thomas Sancton, “Thirty for Charlie Watson,” in Newsmen’s Holiday: Nieman Essays—First Series, ed. Louis Martin Lyons (Cambridge.: Harvard University Press, 1942), 192.

91 Curtis Daniel MacDougall, Newsroom Problems and Policies (New York: Macmillan, 1941), 177.

92 Ibid., 177.

93 Roland Edgar Wolseley and Laurence R. Campbell, Exploring Journalism: With Special Emphasis on Its Social and Vocational Aspects, 2nd ed. Prentice-Hall Journalism Series (New York: Prentice-Hall, 1949), 88.

94 Ibid.

95 “Columbia Awards Pulitzer Prizes,” New York Times, June 5, 1917, 10.

96 Herbert Bayard Swope, “Preface,” in A Treasury of Great Reporting: “Literature under Pressure” from the Sixteenth Century to Our Own Time, edited by Louis L. Snyder and Richard Brandon Morris, 2nd ed. (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1962), xxviii.

97 Ibid., xxxvii.

98 Stewart Robertson and George Fox Mott, “Journalism as a Vocation,” in New Survey of Journalism, ed. George Fox Mott (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1953), 14.

99 Ibid., 14.

100 Grant Milnor Hyde, Newspaper Reporting (New York: Prentice-Hall, 1952), 69.

101 Ibid., 203.

102 Ethel Maude Colson, Writing and Editing for Women: A Bird’s-eye View of the Widening Opportunities for Women in Newspaper, Magazine and Other Writing Work (New York, London: Funk & Wagnalls Company, 1927), 3.

103 Ibid., 3–4.

104 Ibid., 201.

105 Maurine Hoffman Beasley, Kathryn T. Theus, and University of Maryland, College Park, College of Journalism, Women’s Project, The New Majority: A Look at What the Preponderance of Women in Journalism Education Means to the Schools and to the Professions (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1988), 29.

106 Ibid., 31.

107 James L. C. Ford, “Women ‘Arrive’ in Journalism,” in New Survey of Journalism, edited by George Fox Mott (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1953), 14.

108 Michael J. Ogden, “A More Informed Life, Not Tied to Conventional Office Routine,” in Do You Belong in Journalism? Eighteen Editors Tell How You Can Explore Career Opportunities in Newspaper Work, edited by Henry Gemmill and Bernard Kilgore (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1959), 59.

109 James L. C. Ford, “Radio-Television: A New Medium,” in New Survey of Journalism, ed. George Fox Mott (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1953), 328.

110 Donald E. Brown and John Paul Jones, Radio and Television News (New York: Rinehart, 1954), 132.

111 Michael L. Johnson, The New Journalism: The Underground Press, the Artists of Nonfiction, and Changes in the Established Media (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1971), 88.

112 Ben H. Bagdikian, “Foreword,” in Investigative Reporting and Editing, ed. Paul N. Williams (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1978), viii.

113 Gretchen Dworznik and Max Grubb, “Preparing for the Worst: Making a Case for Trauma Training in the Journalism Classroom,” 191.

114 Roger Simpson, “Journalism and Trauma: A Long Overdue Conjunction,” Nieman Reports 58, no. 3 (2004): 77.

115 Anthony Feinstein, Journalists under Fire: The Psychological Hazards of Covering War (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006), 6.

116 Meyer and Rowan, “Institutionalized Organizations: Formal Structure as Myth and Ceremony,” 347.

117 Ibid., 358.

118 Ibid., 341.

119 Zucker, “Organizations as Institutions,” 25.

120 Tammar B. Zilber, “Institutional Maintenance as Narrative Acts,” in Institutional Work: Actors and Agency in Institutional Studies of Organizations, edited by Thomas B. Lawrence, Roy Suddaby, and Bernard Leca (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 205.