Journalism's Counterinsurgency against “Free Space”

Abstract

Journalists, disheartened in the decade after World War I by their role in spreading domestic wartime propaganda, attempted to restore press integrity through new, professional principles and practices. These efforts to re-assert the press’ standing included an active resistance to the contemporaneous rise of propaganda offered by the domestic public relations industry. In particular, newspaper publishers and editors, through the American Newspaper Publishers Associations anti-publicity bulletin, aggressively called on news workers to resist publicity seekers who undermined the advertising-based economic model of the paper. This movement against space-seeking propagandists provided additional momentum for the advent of a modern professional journalism that ironically finds itself predisposed to use propaganda materials.

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Notes on contributors

Burton St. John

BURTON ST. JOHN III is an assistant professor in the Communication and Theatre Arts Department at Old Dominion University. He wishes to thank Rachel Thurneysen-Lukow, an information resource specialist for the Newspaper Association of America, for her assistance on this study.