Civilizing voices : American press criticism, 1880-1950 /

This history of journalism and its critics during the pretelevision golden age of newspapers demonstrates that while things change they remain the same. Marzolf quotes Time in 1983 charging the press with arrogance, insensitivity, and sensationalism--exactly the same charges that she documents being made in 1880. Over the seven decades covered in this volume other repeated charges include bias, distortion, and incompetence. The root cause for these problems is seen as commercialization--newspapers are business enterprises that put profit ahead of public service. The press response to criticism has been to deny yet at the same time to work for higher standards of "professionalism." In this extensively researched and thoroughly documented study Marzolf presents the details but leaves the reader to discover the above-listed basic trends. At times even the author gets lost in these details, as when she notes on p. 119 that the term "objective reporting" did not appear until the 1930s but reports five pages later that it first appeared in 1919. The focus in entirely East Coast with no reference to newspapers in the western two-thirds of the country. The outstanding bibliography deserves special notice. -P. E. Kane, SUNY College at Brockport