Thomas and Heinrich Mann, Bertolt Brecht and Arnold Schoenberg – had all moved to Los Angeles, but many of them found the Hollywood film industry depressing (Wiggershaus, 1994) as reflected in key writings during the war period. Referring to Hollywood, Horkheimer and Adorno argued that the American film industry dominated by large profit-driven corporations created ‘dupes’ of the masses, who would mindlessly consume material (Gorton, 2009). They dedicated a chapter of their work Dialectic of Enlightenment (Adorno & Horkheimer, 1944/1979: 137) specifically to the Culture Industry, stating:
No independent thinking must be expected from the audience: the product prescribes every reaction: not by its natural structure (which collapses under reflection), but by signals. Any logical connection calling for mental effort is painstakingly avoided.
This deeply sceptical view reduces the audience to a passive receiver of messages, speaking of a compulsive imitation (1944/1979: 167):
The most intimate reactions of human beings have become so entirely reified, even to themselves, that the idea of anything peculiar to them survives only in extreme abstraction: personality means hardly more than dazzling white teeth and freedom from body odor and emotions. That is the triumph of advertising in the culture industry: the compulsive imitation by consumers of cultural commodities which, at the same time, they recognize as false.
Horkheimer and Adorno’s highly negative views on mass society and the influence of big business help explain why the war years were crucial in the United States to the establishment of journalism’s normative values. On the one hand, this was a reaction against the power of suggestion that was believed to be so pervasive in society, politics and the entertainment industry. But on the other hand, newspapers, well aware of their ability to shape opinion from the earliest days of their history, were also keen to set themselves above the masses. Tudor (1999), reviewing the study of ‘media effects’ in this period, characterises thinking in the 1940s and 1950s as deeply hierarchical in which it was considered that the elite could exercise control over a passive mass population, with inevitable anti-democratic consequences. This viewpoint is constructed around the concepts of ‘us and them’ in which ‘the vast ordinary population cannot resist the all-powerful constraint of the mighty media although the fact of this restraint is immediately apparent to the enlightened and therefore resistant elite’ (1999: 25).
Post-War norms consolidated
It was against this background that the Hutchins Commission on Freedom of the Press, set up during World War II, consolidated still further the normative path for American journalism in the immediate post-war period.
The report (1947: vi) set out not only the requirement for a free press, but also the duty on the press to serve the public good, stating clearly in its introduction:
This report deals with the responsibilities of the owners and managers of the press to their consciences and the common good for the formation of public opinion.
This championing of journalistic autonomy, standards and public service was anchored by adherence to the codes and procedures of objective reporting (Curran, 2011). With hindsight, the Hutchins Commission probably represents the high point in codification of journalistic norms in the Anglo-American sphere and its recommendations set high store by the professionalism of journalists. It recommended that ‘the press use every means that can be devised to increase the competence, independence and effectiveness of its staff’ (1947: 94). Two years later in 1949, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) introduced what it termed a ‘fairness doctrine’, requiring broadcasters to discuss controversial issues of public interest but also to ensure that contrasting views were aired. This held sway until its elimination in 1987, opening the way for partisan journalism on the airwaves such as the right-wing Rush Limbaugh Show just one year later (Curran, 2011). There was a similar development to Hutchins in the United Kingdom when a 1947–49 Royal Commission described the press as ‘the chief agency for instructing the public on the main issues of the day … the main source from which information, discussion and advocacy reach the public’. The combination of the Hutchins recommendations, ‘fairness doctrine’ and Royal Commission held out the prospect of a rational space in the media for discursive debate that would sustain liberal democratic society.
That idea is still central to today’s discussion on the role of the media, not least because of the influence a decade later of the German philosopher and social theorist Juürgen Habermas. Representing a second generation of the Frankfurt School academics, Habermas had sketched out a ‘public sphere’ of rational-critical debate with remarkably similar goals. This public sphere was based on reason, logic and argument. Emotion, on the other hand, was understood as being deviant from the ideals of the public sphere (Wahl-Jorgensen, 2019: 31). Habermas traced the development of this public sphere back to the 18th-century salons, coffee houses and early press. For him it was instrumental in the constitution of a liberal democratic society. But echoing the Marxist roots of the Frankfurt School, he argued that the state and corporate interest, manifested by mass media, public relations and consumerism, had subsequently made this ideal unattainable. Despite this, the translation of Habermas’s theories into an English-speaking academic environment led to discussion of the concept not as an ideal but as a reality (Curran, 2011), though many proponents and critics alike argue it has only ever been an ideal (Kavka, 2008: 53).
Challenges to the objectivity norm
At this stage of its development, Anglo-American journalism had positioned itself as an elite profession, able to distance itself from what it considered to be the harmful influence of propaganda and other forms of media on society, rising above the masses, holding authority to account and helping to formulate opinion for the public good. This sweeping agenda had been enshrined in the United States by Hutchins and the FCC. But no sooner were the cornerstones of this value system in place than they started to wobble. During the 1960s, the challenges came from within the ranks of journalists, from academics and from a combination of external forces (Maras, 2013: 54; Schudson, 1978).
Prominent journalists started questioning the ideal of objectivity, which at one stage even became a term of abuse and was seen as a flawed doctrine (Schudson, 1978: 160). Objectivity, which had been based on the principle of eliminating bias, came to be seen as biased in itself by refusing to question the structures of power and by reinforcing official views of reality. The daily sign-off by Cronkite at the end of the CBS news bulletin ‘That’s the way it is’ was considered by some as just too smug (Schudson, 1978: 161). US journalist Martha Gellhorn, one of the first female war correspondents, had already foreshadowed the trend, declaring that she had ‘no time for all this objectivity shit’ (Moorehead, 2003). Her reporting from Dachau, as she accompanied the US 7th Army on their liberation of the concentration camp in 1945, was based on deeply moving, detailed first-person observation, a style that would be echoed later in what became known as ‘journalism of attachment’ during the Balkans conflicts of the 1990s.
In America’s post-war history, the questioning of objectivity needs to be examined initially in the context of the Cold War and Vietnam. Senator Joseph McCarthy was widely seen as exploiting the doctrine of objective news to foster his anti-Communist witch hunt. The method of reporting simply what was said prevented journalists from denouncing his accusations as false (Boudana, 2011). Ever more intrusive news management by government, especially around the Cuban missile crisis and Vietnam War, led US journalists to question why they should simply relay what were lies or disinformation from government spokesmen. As a result, a more interpretive form of journalism began to evolve on both sides of the Atlantic, injecting the opinion of reporters (again as an elite) into news. When it came to war reporting, any pretence of objectivity was sometimes dropped (Schudson, 1978: 183) although the underlying power structures were not necessarily questioned. The Vietnam War was a case in point. While US media were broadly supportive at the beginning, they later became highly critical of its conduct by the military and US administration. But as Curran points out (2011), this discussion debated the execution and strategy of the war without questioning the underlying objective of Cold War containment. The US press generally backed the 1990 Gulf War campaign against Iraq, and for some academics such as McChesney was a propaganda organ for militarism and war (2002: 93). Similarly,