I recommend you read some newspaper articles from the 1920s and 1930s. Witty, well-written, and much less discernible spin than current news articles. Journalism has declined as a trade, there is no question. The real issue is whether journalism is net worse for society than it previously was.
I recommend you read some history. The term “yellow journalism” came about lamenting the dramatic shit spewed by newspapers in the late 1800s.
> and much less discernible spin than current news articles.
It’s much less discernible because you aren’t familiar with any of the topics they are discussing. The best you can do is confirm a particular news article’s biases align with the biases of the current historical record’s biases.
Disclaimer: I've not specialised in media history, though I've been exploring it for a few years.
You can find clear bias through sources such as I.F. Stone (active 1950s -- 1970s), or George Seldes (1930s -- 1960s, lived to 1995). Earlier muckrakers included Upton Sinclair (The Jungle and It Can't Happen Here, 1910s -- 1950s), Ida M. Tarbell (The History of Standard Oil, 1890s -- 1920s), and Lincoln Steffans and Ray Stannard Baker (both late 19th century / early 20th).
I've commented numerous times recommending Hamilton Holt's Commercialism and Journalism (1909), a short book highlighting the influence of advertising on media. It's short, readable, fact-filled, and available at the Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/commercialismjou00holtuoft
Walter Lippmann's Public Opinion (1922) largely established the model for the "impartial press" (so called, only partially successful as such) during the bulk of the 20th century. It was based in significant part on Lippmann's own experience with failures of the news media in reporting accurately on the Russian Revolution of 1917--23.
Other authors I'd recommend would be Ed Herman and Noam Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent (the title itself is a reference to Lippmann's work), Robert W. McChesney's many books on media, Ben H. Bagdikian, The Media Monopoly (cited in the famouse Google "Backrub" paper (http://infolab.stanford.edu/~backrub/google.html), Neil Postman's Amusing Ourself to Death, and Edward Jay Espstein, News from Nowhere (https://archive.org/details/newsfromnowheret00epst).
The last looks at television news as of 1971, including the numerous biases built in to the medium through narrative focus, budget constraints, and technological limitations, as well as the pace and scale of operations. Not all of those still apply, though some do, but it does remain a persuasive argument of how even incidental characteristics can profoundly influence a medium.
For contemporaneous criticisms of television, see Edward J. Murrow's "Lights and Wires in a Box" speech, and Newton Minnow's "Vast Wasteland" speech, from the late 1950s / early 1960s.
Nice list of references. You might want to add The Press by A. J. Liebling [1], a witty, perceptive writer about many subjects.
From 1960, when many U.S. newspapers were going out of business: “The best thing Congress could do to keep more newspapers going would be to raise the capital-gains tax to the level of the income tax. (Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one.)” (p. 706).
I avoided mentioning bias for this reason. Discernible spin could be "obvious bias", since I'm referring to tradecraft, not honesty. Appreciate the material—I do enjoy reading older writing.
To be clear, bias need not be conscious or deliberate. There's a great piece by Lippmann on the Russian Revolution that details just how profoundly the press got the story wrong, in large part because they were relying on official sources rather than getting "the street" view (paraphrasing Lippann generously here).
Spin is pretty much always deliberate propaganda. It may not be an outright lie, but the primacy is on persuading or manipulating rather than informing.
