The Importance of the Press
The newspaper is a powerful medium. It is powerful because it has the ability to influence the way that people view the world, as well as their opinion of what they see. In peaceful times (or in times of oppression, for sometimes they can appear to be happening at the same moment) the press is usually one of the instruments used by the state in order to maintain the status quo. However, during times of political unrest it is often the press who becomes the major antagonist in the fight against the government.
Why is this so? Why does the press get so deeply involved in, not just the reporting of, but the instigating and propagating of political change? In order to properly answer this question there are several other key ideas and questions which must first be examined. To understand the nature of the press' involvement in political change, one must initially understand the nature of political change in its own right. In this vein, the first section of the paper is dedicated to this investigation. An examination of the motives behind revolution will be given in order to provide a framework for the second part of the paper, which will look at the involvement of the press during revolutionary times in more specific terms. The French revolution of 1789 will be used as a backdrop for this inquiry.
There are many different types of political movements, and accordingly there are many different reasons for these movements to occur. Value-oriented and norm-oriented movements deal with matters of social and political concern, but do so in the setting of the already existing political and social structures.
Revolutionary movements seek to make fundamental changes to society in order to establish a completely new political and social order.1 The distinction being that the first aims to make subtle changes to society from within, while the latter's aim is to make drastic changes to society by getting rid of the principles that society was based on.
Usually this will involve a change in political beliefs and values, or political ideology. In today's world there are numerous forms of political ideologies, but in essence they are all derived from two basic root ideologies; socialism and liberalism. Socialism is an ideology w...
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... Prelude to Power, The Parisian radical Press: 1789-1791,
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The Influence of the Enlightenment on the French revolution, edited by William F.
Church, Canada: D.C. Heath and Company, 1974
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Canada Inc., 1990.
Osler, Andrew. News, The Evolution of Journalism in Canada. Missisauga: Copp
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Footnotes 1James John Guy, People, Politics and Government, (Toronto, 1990),
p. 103. 2 Ibid., p. 81 3 Gustave Le Bon, The Psychology of revolution, (USA,
1968), pp. 162-3 4Ibid., p. 28. 5Andrew M. Osler, News, The Evolution of
Journalism in Canada, (Canada, 1993), p. 54. 6Jeremy D. Popkin, Revolutionary
News The Press in France, 1789-1799, (USA, 1990), pp. 19-20. 7Ibid., p. 22-3.
8Ibid., p.25. 9Ibid., p. 26. 10Ibid., p.28. 11Ibid., p. 2. 12Ibid., p. 3.
13Ibid., p. 3. 14Osler, p. 54.
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the French Revolution. Hunt, Lynn & Censer, Jack. University Park, Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State University Press (2001)
In his book, The Anatomy of Revolution, Crane Brinton describes four historically significant revolutions in modern states, the English Revolution of the 1640s, the American Revolution of 1776, the French Revolution of 1789, and the Russian Revolution of 1917, and compares uniform trends and commonalities within those revolutions. Brinton hypothesizes that those revolutions have specific similarities in their inception, manifestation, conduct, and conclusion.
“If we measure the radicalism of revolutions by the degree of social misery or economic deprivation suffered, or by the number of people killed or manor houses burned, then this conventional emphasis on the conservatism of the American Revolution becomes true enough. B...
In this essay I shall try to find whether the Terror was inherent from the French revolutions outset or was it the product of exceptional circumstances. The French revolution is the dividing line between the Ancien Regime and the modern world. After France the hierarchy that societies of the time had been founded on began to change and they began to sweep away the intricate political structures of absolute monarchy, but however to achieve this was the Terror absolutely necessary? And was it planned/ or was it just the extraordinary circumstances, which the French had lead themselves into once they had deposed of Louis the sixteenth. Whatever way it is looked at, the political ideology of the rest of the world was going to change after the French revolution. The conflicting ideology's of the French revolution from socialism to nationalism would now be mainstream words and spearhead many political parties in years to come. The French revolution had been in high hopes that a peaceful transition could be made from absolutist to parliamentary monarchy, but what went wrong? Surely the terror could not have been in their minds at this time? Surely it was not inherent from the start.
The French and American revolutions are both very significant in the world’s history. The American Revolution happened first, around the last half of the 18th century where the Thirteen Colonies became the United States of America, and gained independence from the British Empire. The French revolution on the other hand, was from 1789 until the turn of the century 1799. For the French people this was a period of political and social turmoil. The idea of Enlightenment stuck a large population of the French people and led to many changes in society. These two individual revolutions have many comparisons and although they are not identical they become intertwined with separate philosophies on politics and economic expansion.
Siebert, Peterson, and Schramm’s “Four Theories of the Press” argue that “the press always takes on the form and coloration of the social and political structures within which it operates” (p. 1). The book supports this argument by discussing authoritarian, libertarian, social responsibility, and Soviet-totalitarian theories of the press.
... truly set the political system of America apart from the political system of England. By only looking at the textbook definition of a revolution it can be argued that the revolution truly was not revolutionary, but after the colonists won the war nothing went back to normal. The colonists could not conserve what they had before, but instead had to completely upheave the entire system. Therefore by the definition of what a revolution actually is, allows the American Revolution to be truly revolutionary.
The French Revolution was a bloody civil war that lasted from the years 1789-1799. [1] The revolution arose out of hard economic times that had befallen France. Widespread famine and hunger, due to a grain shortage, rampaged through sections of the country. The economic crisis led to an increase in taxes on the lower classes, known as the third estate, to upkeep the lavish lifestyle of the nobility. [1] All of these are the known factors that led to the rise of the French Revolution.
Stromberg, Roland N. 1986. "Reevaluating the French Revolution." The History Teacher (Society for History Education) Vol. 20 (No. 1): 87-107. http://www.jstor.org/stable/493178.
The book, The Anatomy of Revolution, by author Crane Brinton delivers a thoroughly crafted description that emphasizes the basic outlines, or “anatomy”, of a revolution by highlighting four main revolutions: the English, American, French, and Russian revolutions. Brinton pulls the main ideologies and causes of each of these revolutions and creates a skeletal outline of the main stages that confer to a “revolution.” In the modern day, it is easy to dismiss the idea of widespread revolutions as just a mere threat that prevailed in some part of history. However, Brinton’s inquiries into the workings of a revolution show that without the “stages” of revolutions, civilizations as we know them today might not even exist. The author himself, Crane
Once Enlightenment philosophies created new views on individual’s natural rights and their place in society, resistance to oppressive government was inevitable. The core beliefs of freedom and equality above all served as a catalyst for the revolutions in America, France, and Haiti. Because of these shared ideals each revolution is interconnected with the revolution before it. However, the waves of this revolutionary movement that swept through the Atlantic World became increasingly radical with each new country it entered. By looking at the citizen involvement and causes of the American, French, and Haitian revolutions, the growing radicality of these insurrections can be better understood.
were not as radical as the transformation to democratic thought. It is here that Wood points out the “uncontrolla...
'In political and ideological terms the revolution was no doubt crucial importance, but humanity was not transformed, thereby at the end of all the political upheavels fo the revolution and Empire little had changed in the daily life of most frenchment.'
The media has this immense power, this way of showing things how their network wants, and
Gottschalk, Lous Reichental and James T. Shotwell. The Era of the French Revolution (1715-1815). Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1929. Print.