Newspapers (now broadened to "the media") influence public opinion and the course of political affairs. This deft little book tells the story of media and influence, historically and technologically, and manages to be not just readable but also extremely difficult to put down. I read it in one sitting and got a lot from it. It is easy to read because it is both well-written and well-illustrated--most of the book is in the form of a comic: panels, pictures, captions. The potentially dry topics are made interesting because the words and the illustrations go hand-in-hand.

The book explores the relationship between politicians, public, media, and technology. English parliamentarians who legally constrain presses; American free presses; the rapid introduction (and reintroduction and reintroduction) of censorship bills by Presidents; contempt for journalists; the trends and herd mentality of reporters; news that just isn't true; the different types of bias that could manifest in journalism; can journalists have opinions and still be fair or objective; what the hell IS objectivity; how political war machines use journalists; how journalists are complicit in those machines; transparency as a substitute for objectivity; cognitive biases; the ineffectiveness of facts to change opinions; and more. It's thoughtful difficult stuff, but always seems natural and interesting because every point is illustrated (literally and metaphorically) with eye-watering examples from history. (And she uses the word "feculent", which I love)

Some bits I particularly liked:

By the 17th century, many urban Europeans can rely on weekly or even some daily papers for news of the world. But not the news of the country in which they're printed. That's because printers operate at the pleasure of the authorities, and the authorities do not find local coverage pleasurable. First, England bans newspapers for six years. Parliament rules that every printed word must be approved--licensed--before publication. In 1644, John Milton complains. "We must not think to make a commodity of all the knowledge in the Land, to mark and license it like our broad cloth, and our wool packs. Believe it, Lords and Commons, they who counsel ye to such a suppressing, do as good as bid ye suppress yourselves."

Eventually the courts revoke prior restraint, but printers can still be ruined by the charge of "seditious libel" for publishing criticism of the government. And truth is no defense. Legal doctrine holds that "the greater the truth the greater the libel"--the greater the threat to Divine Right.

[Thomas Jefferson] writes this in 1799: "Our citizens may be deceived for a while, and have been deceived; but as long as the presses can be protected, we may trust to them for light." He writes this in 1807: "Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle." What happened to Tom? In 1801, Tom becomes President. The press hates presidents.

"Journalists are like dogs--whenever anything moves they begin to bark." -- Arthur Schopenhauer

The story of the atomic bomb was deeply disturbing and provocative. Of course, the US government worked hard to hush up news of the damage done by the bomb. Journalists were kept out of the area and censored. The newspapers were fed a rabidly pro-atomic line by a pet journo stooge. But, eventually, when the news of the massive human damage (civilian centers were bombed, not military bases) the public were finally horrified. That horror is what the government sought to avoid, yet it's precisely that horror which ensured public opinion went against dropping more of them and which, it seems plausible to me, helped to prevent further such horrors. This is the power of news at its best: a moral force, a preventative to unchecked power.

The best part of the book for me, though, was Daniel Hallin's donut:

Historian Daniel Hallin divides the journalists' world into three spheres. The donut hole is the sphere of consensus, "the region of motherhood and apple pie". Unquestionable values and unchallengeable truths. The donut is journalism's sweet spot: the sphere of legitimate controversy. Here issues are undecided, debated, probed. The sphere of deviance is the air around the donut. Limbo. The place for people and opinions that the "mainstream of the society reject as unworthy of being heard." In fact, says Hallin, the press plays gatekeeper, by defining and defending "the limits of acceptable political conduct."

I'm already seeing the world and the articles I read online in a different light. I couldn't ask any more from this magnificent book.