World Without Mind: The Existential Threat of Big Tech

by Franklin Foer

Commercialism had a strange, unexpected consequence. Only after newspapers came to depend on the market for survival did journalism self-consciously reject the pressures of the market. Journalism came to insist on its objectivity, to describe its mission as nothing less than the pursuit of Truth. There were sociological reasons for this new high-mindedness. Advertising created an explosion of newspapers—and that swelled the ranks of writers and editors. The employees of newspapers aspired to join the ranks of the respectable professions. Instead of shading the truth and spouting opinions, newspaper writers began to view themselves as “reporters”—faithfully recounting reality. Interviewing was an esoteric practice in the mid-nineteenth century; by World War I, it was an essential part of the job. Advertisers liked the idea of professionalism, too. They preferred to sell their wares next to the least controversial, least alienating copy possible. And though owners might rather have used papers as their own playthings, they came to accept the new way of neutral just-the-facts reporting—which gave their papers (and themselves) a new legitimacy.