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Philosophy and Practice of Personal Journalism With 3si /ai 5 PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE OF PERSONAL JOURNALISM WITH MORAL CONCERN IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY THESIS Presented to the Graduate Council of the University of North Texas in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of MASTER OF JOURNALISM By Marshall N. Surratt, B.A. Denton, Texas December, 1989 Surratt, Marshall N., Philosophy and Practice of Personal Journalism with Moral Concern in the Twentieth Century. Master of Journalism (Journalism), December, 1989, 192 pp., bibliography, 115 titles. This study seeks to show that a tradition exists of personal journalists who, more than supporting a partisan position, have moral concern and desire reconciliation. Between the First World War and the Hutchins Commission report of 1947, Walter Lippmann and other media critics theorized that journalistic objectivity is impossible, but recognized journalists' responsibility to interpret events to their publics. In the 1930s these new theories coincided with historical events to encourage journalists' personal involvement with their subjects. The work of the best personal journalists, for example, George Orwell and James Agee, resulted from moral concern. This tradition is furthered today in the journalism of Bill Moyers. Copyright by Marshall Nash Surratt 1989 iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This study was aided by a grant from the Frank W. Mayborn Scholar Program, for which the author is sincerely grateful. That program, part of the Frank W. Mayborn Foundation, helps journalism graduate students at three Texas universities including the University of North Texas. The program and foundation are named for the late Texas publisher and philanthropist. Of course, the foundation should not be held liable for the opinions expressed in this study. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Chapter I. INTRODUCTION . 1 Statement of the Problem Purpose of the Study Questions Review of Literature Justification Definition of Terms Limitations of the Study Methodology Organization of the Thesis II. PHILOSOPHICAL MODELS FOR A TRADITION OF PERSONAL JOURNALISM WITH MORAL CONCERN . 18 III. HISTORICAL INFLUENCES ON PERSONAL JOURNALISM WITH MORAL CONCERN . ... # . 52 IV. PERSONAL JOURNALISM WITH MORAL CONCERN SINCE THE 19303 . 100 V. INFLUENCE OF RELIGION AND MYTH ON PERSONAL JOURNALISTS . ... 133 VI. CONCLUSIONS . .*.0. * * * 171 WORKS CITED - - - . - -. -0 . 178 WORKS CONSULTED . .. 188 V CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY Is there a tradition in journalism of personal journalism with moral concern? That is, has there been a tradition of journalists interested in an analytical function of journalism and in moral concern for their subject or their publics? This study seeks to show a tradition of personal journalism and a body of journalists dedicated to moral concern. This study will show that political events, and new theories of what history is, influenced these journalists to show moral concern and to examine the function of media. It also will show that the new ideas about history and media and moral concern remain influential in journalism today. More than one author has traced writers' use of experiences in World War I in writing about a feeling of the divided self, the self separated from an officialdom that is no longer trusted. The literary pulse that came in Europe from this war was not matched in the United States, which entered the war late and was not, as Britain was, fewer than fifty miles away from some of the fiercest action, or as France and Belgium were--in the middle of the warfare from 1 2 trenches across "no man's land." But events of political and social upheaval that touched this country, such as the Great Depression of the 1930s, encouraged literature here in which writers questioned official versions of history. Those events, massive in their destruction and hardship, shook public confidence so much that the public could accept thoughts--and style--of writers considered too radical before. Later, the Spanish Civil War influenced journalists and fiction writers. Many saw that conflict as a contest between a small group of good, democratic people against Goliath forces of fascism. Writers such as George Orwell, Ernest Hemingway, and Andre Malraux emphasized the individual integrity and stubborn bravery of the outnumbered, whose fight was ignored by Western democracies. Orwell, especially, also came away with lessons about infighting among the resistance groups, "between initials," he said. At the same time that political events encouraged skepticism about official histories, the philosophy of history was changing. The better-read journalists would have been influenced by the changing attitudes toward history and toward such notions as "science", and "objec- tivity." If they were not familiar with the philosophers, at least they would have been influenced by watered-down versions of the new ideas, just as people have ideas about 3 existentialism who have never read Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus or a religious proponent such as Jacques Maritain. Much of this theoretical work had fruition between 1900 and 1940. In this country, in 1920 George Santayana, Arthur 0. Lovejoy, and five other philosophers published Essays in Critical Realism as their manifesto. Briefly, they believed certain ideas have always existed, but that contemporary thinkers are wrong to believe that words expressing those ideas mean the same today as the words once did. Rather, in any given period in history, ideas are interpreted and reinterpreted by media or other vehicles or essences. For Santayana essences were the data by which reality is revealed. Humanity understood the essences in a hybrid of rationality and intuition. By reason humans distinguished shades of excellence in explanations for the world, Santayana said, but the recognition of excellence depended on an irrational impulse. Among those in England with similar views that explana- tions for the world could not be completely objective were R. G. Collingwood, whose Speculum Mentis, or The Map of Knowledge, was published in 1924, and the philologist Owen Barfield, whose History in English Words was published in 1926. Outside the philosophy of history, but influential on historical interpretation, was another European, the Viennese Sigmund Freud. The first English translation of 4 his General Introduction to Psychoanalysis was published in 1920, and it further influenced historians and other social observers to think of events as layers of images to be unraveled. Two quotes from historians of the 1930s are represen- tative of the changing attitudes toward history. Writing in 1939 about the previous two decades, the political scientist-historians Charles A. Beard and Mary Beard said about the press: In truth the ideal of a completely "objective" report on any complicated series of events was an impossible ideal. Necessarily, if not at all by intention, the slogan "all the news that's fit to print" was repeatedly violated. At best the maxim was merely a vague aspiration beyond the reach of the finest resolves. 1 Charles Beard had written a seminal paper on the new historiographical theories in American Historical Review in 1934, "Written History as an Act of Faith." And in American Heroes and Hero-Worship (1943) journalist, journalism instructor, and historian Gerald White Johnson wrote: "Nothing changes more constantly than the past; for the past that influences our lives . does not consist of what actually happened, but of what men believe happened." 2 5 This paper seeks to show the influence of changing ideas about history and objectivity on journalism and press criticism. A preliminary search of texts shows an increasing self-examination among the best writers, even in the midst of prescribed party lines as in the 1930s.. Examples are John Steinbeck's documentary novel The Grapes of Wrath (1939) and James Agee's nonfiction Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (1941). How much media criticism owes to the new historio- graphical theories also will be examined. Walter Lippmann's A Preface to Politics (1913), Public Opinion (1922), and A Preface to Morals (1929) owe much to the new theories as well as to such political events as the First World War. At Harvard University, he learned theories about history and its use from such teachers as William James and Santayana, under whom Lippmann was a graduate assistant; and as a U. S. Army captain in a propaganda unit during World War I, Lippmann saw firsthand how history was shaped. Henry Luce, who with Britton Hadden began Time magazine in 1923, also thought questions about the freedom of the press and its role in society might be philosophical or moral ones. In the 1940s he funded The Commission on Freedom of the Press to investigate mass communication in this country. The committee, which made its report in 1947, was composed not of journalists but of theoreticians. Its chairman was Robert M. Hutchins, then president of the 6 University of Chicago and on the board of directors of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Its members included Zechariah Chafee Jr., a professor of law at Harvard University and a First Amendment scholar; William E. Hocking, professor of philosophy, emeritus, at Harvard; Harold D. Lasswell, a political scientist and a researcher of public opinion and propaganda; poet Archibald MacLeish; and theologian Reinhold Neihbuhr, whose interest was ethics and a person's responsibility in society. To bring the subject up to date, this paper concludes by comparing the moral concern in personal journalism between 1914 and 1947 with the intent in New Journalism, and by asking if any journali-sts working today strive for a personal journalism with moral concern. Statement of the Problem The problem of this study is to identify and describe a tradition of personal journalism with moral concern. In the years between 1914 and 1947, Walter Lippmann and other media critics theorized that journalistic objectivity is impos- sible, but that nevertheless journalists have the respon- sibility to interpret events to their publics. Similarly, historians and philosophers of history formulated new theories about what history is.
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