What's the Use of Newspapers?

America's first newspaper appeared in Boston on Sept. 29, 1690. Its publisher, Benjamin Harris, presented a wonderfully unobtrusive vision for his fledgling enterprise. He agreed to provide, once a month, “an Account of such considerable things as have arrived unto our Notice.” He realized that providence might provide more newsworthy items than his monthly could record. Therefore, “if any Glut of Occur-rences happen,” he was prepared to publish Publick Occurrences Both Forreign and Domestick more often. The responsibility for making news lay entirely in the hands of God (or the devil).

This theological view of news and news reporting lingered, if it did not dominate newspapers, for some time. In 1866, James Parton observed that “recording with exactness and power the thing that has come to pass, is rovidence addressing men. In his 1962 book The Image: A Guide to Psuedo-Events in America, historian Daniel Boorstin relates the story of a Southern Baptist clergyman before the Civil War who used to say, when a newspaper was brought into the room, “Be kind enough to let me have it a few minutes, till I see how the Supreme Being is governing the world.” And Charles Dana, one of the most celebrated of American editors, defended his extensive reporting of crime in the New York Sun by stating, “I have always felt that whatever the Divine Providence permitted to occur I was not too proud to report.”

Looking at the news of the day through a theological framework gradually yielded to a decisively secular view. As editors realized that reporting the news in print could be financially rewarding, they became less eager to wait for divine providence to act—and altogether excited about priming the populace to purchase their wares. “The newspaper,” as Richard Weaver has pointed out, has become “a man-made cosmos of events around us at the time.” It has become, for so many, a momentary cosmos to which they bind themselves with unquestioning faith.

Consider Abraham Lincoln's familiar maxim: “You may fool all the people some of the time; you can even fool some of the people all the time; but you can't fool all of the people all the time.” The meaning of this statement rests on two fundamental and plausible assumptions: One, that there is a determinable difference between reality and illusion; and two, that, confronted with a choice between the two, people would prefer reality. One of the effects of the newspaper in the contemporary world, unfortunately, is that it weaves a mesmerizing fantasy that crowds out reality. As Boorstin notes, “The American citizen thus lives in a world where fantasy is more real than reality, where the image has more dignity than the original.”

Reality in Bites

The traditional distinction between reality and illusion has become both blurred and indistinct. “Reality” is now the word we use to describe our frenetic post-modern world, which is as artificial as an alarm clock. “Welcome to the ‘real’ world,” people say, with a sardonic smile. Vice is only too real, while virtue is a nice illusion. It is not so much that newspapers “fool” people, to use Lincoln's term, as much as they cover people in a cocoon of ersatz reality. The media has a smothering effect on people. Having rendered its readers vulnerable, the newspaper, in particular, re-shapes how they think

Ensnarled in this virtual reality — this print creation of editors and journalists — we are repeatedly instructed that abortion is merely a choice, homosexual acts simply represent an alternate lifestyle, religion is repressive, the Catholic faith is dogmatic, pre-marital sex is natural, marital fidelity is idealistic, truth is subjective, values are relative, and political correctness is liberating.

On Oct. 4, 1979, the Washington Bureau of the Globe & Mail ran an article about the new Pope's traditional views about human sexuality. “Pope's Sharp Swipes at Sexuality Begin to Bother Some Young People,” the headline read. The new Pope was fully expected to have new ideas on sexual morality. This successor to the Chair of Peter was assumed to have been formed by the print media. The article, in typical fashion, quotes a 17-year-old girl, identified as a Roman Catholic, who said, “How does he expect to relate to youth with that Dark Age stuff? I'm disappointed in him.” By quoting her in an approving manner, the newspaper was conferring upon this teen-ager a certain legitimacy as a papal critic. The desired implications were clear: The Pope is out of touch with today's youth; 17-year-olds are reliable moralists; the Globe & Mail is liberating its readers from the bondage of an out-moded religion. This is a representative tactic of the newspaper medium and one that is played out every day throughout the literate world.

The doctor of philosophy has been superannuated by the spin doctor. The obligation of the newspaper today is not to report the news, but to put the right spin on it so that it can continue to proselytize its readers in the direction of its political allegiance. Each newspaper is presumed to have its peculiar slant. This being the case, a John Paul II or a Cardinal Josef Ratzinger is immediately cast as an odd-ball. By the same token, documents reaf-firming the sacredness of human life such as Humanae Vitae or Donum Vitae seem utterly incomprehensible.

For those who are familiar with the philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas, one of his most meaningful and enduring phrases is “quidquid recipitur, recipitur per modum recipientis (whatever is received, is received according to the mode of the receiver). For Aquinas, his word “mode,” in this instance, is equivalent to our current use of the word “media.” Marshall McLuhan, whose thinking is anchored in Thomistic philosophy, made a career out of explaining how the media distorts meaning.

What is News?

Aquinas himself said that the bulk of his learning was directed toward two sources that could not lie: nature and Scripture. He did not have to contend with a self-serving and distorting media. Secular newspapers select and skew news to fit their agenda. They become so accustomed to this that they assume everyone has an agenda. What is the Pope's agenda? They assume it could not be truth. Then what could it be? Perhaps to exercise arbitrary power over his passive flock! The newspaper, therefore, divides the world into those who are in step with the media and those who are not. “News” is stimulating; truth is presumptuous.

“Literature is news that stays news,” said Ezra Pound. “Literature is unread, and journalism is unreadable,” quipped Oscar Wilde. The news is in competition with literature because the latter, at its best, deals with that which endures. News is, by its nature, ephemeral. In order to survive, newspapers must constantly find (or create) fresh sources for their daily fare. The newspaper is like a certain species of hummingbird that must continuously feed and beat its wings in order to survive. The typical newspaper room is a beehive of activity, where reporters hastily put together the latest news items for the next edition.

The original inspiration for America's first newspaper was merely to make important occurrences known to people. No hype. No titillation. No emotional manipulation. Today such an endeavor would seem laughably naive.

Richard Weaver, in his enduring critique of modern society, Ideas Have Consequences, likened the newspaper, cinema and radio to a vast machine which he called “The Great Stereopticon.” He passionately denounced its penchant for manipulating its subjects, orchestrating their emotions by telling them when to laugh, when to cry and when to become morally outraged. “What human spirit,” he wrote, “after reading a newspaper or attending a popular motion picture or listening to the farrago of nonsense on a radio program, has not found relief in fixing his gaze upon some characteristic bit of nature?” This human spirit knows exactly what he was talking about. Here's hoping yours does, too.

Don DeMarco is a philosophy professor at St. Jerome's University in Waterloo, Ontario.