Politics and the Media (POLS 328) Professor Jonathan Day

Outline 1. Attendance Sheet 2. Review from Last Class 3. From Criers to Newspapers

History of News Prior to 3,500 B.C. – News was spread by messengers, travelers, criers, smoke signals, and drums 3,500 B.C. – the Chinese domesticate the horse, spreading news faster 3,100 B.C. – oldest known form of written language 105 – paper is invented (different from papyrus in material it used) 1450 – Printing Press 1920 – Radio 1941 – T.V – Internet

Why do we desire News? It satisfies our social being It helps us understand our beliefs Provides us with a sense of unity Provides us with conversation Provides us with entertainment Increases our knowledge

Does the News Increase Our Knowledge? “Enlighten me now, O Muses tenants of Olympian homes, For you are goddesses, inside on everything, know everything. But we mortals hear only the news, and know nothing at all.” - The Iliad “The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers” – Thomas Jefferson

“I really look with commiseration over the great body of my fellow citizens who, reading newspapers, live and die in the belief that they have known something of what has been passing in the world in their time; whereas the accounts they have read in newspapers are just as true a history of any other period of the world as of the present, except that the real names of the day are affixed to their fables.” – Thomas Jefferson

From Criers to Newspapers in America Crier – people who would yell to share the news “When the Hopi Indians found themselves politically divided, they selected two criers – one from the liberal faction and the other from the conservative faction.” Even Criers were biased

17 and 18 th Centuries - Coffee Houses Penny for a cup of coffee Brief period - Professional Story Tellers The Newspaper

1690 – First Newspaper in America Publick Occurrences Both Foreign and Domestick 1704 – Second Newspaper in America Boston News-Letter 1735 – Zenger Trial 1770’s/1780’s – The American Revolution 1833 – First penny press – England’s struggle with penny press

Significance of Newspapers Napoleon declared: “Four hostile newspapers are more to be dreaded than a hundred thousand bayonets” (p. 164)

Significance of News “Government is a performance, and news is the medium in which it is performed” (p. 52)

Next Class Radio, Television, and the Internet