COMM 432

Media in Film

The Muckrakers

Suggested Readings

The Muckrakers

Functions of Mass communication

Cultural transmission

  • Mass Media as socialization channel
  • Media products emphasize certain values and present role models
  • Through media we learn …
    • how to act in specific situations.
    • how to speak.
    • how to think.
    • how to interact with other people.

Denis McQuail: We use the media to satisfy some of our necessities.

  • Need for information
  • Need for entertainment
  • Need for integration, social interaction, or social empathy
  • Need for personal identity

Correlation

  • How mass media select and present information about our social environment.
  • Is the world we see on the screen the real world?
  • How do journalism, advertising, and public relations shape public opinion?

Surveillance

  • Flow of information about everything, everywhere
  • Media as sentinels
  • Four main types of surveillance:
    • Warning surveillance
    • Instrumental surveillance
    • Social Control
    • Power surveillance

Muckraking

  • In 1860, there were only 3 American Millionaires.
  • In 1901, the number had increased up to 3,800.
  • Few – or no – regulations / no monitoring by the government.
  • Robber Barons
    • John D. Rockefeller, Cornelius Vanderbilt, J.P. Morgan, Jay Gould, John Jacob Astor, Andrew Carnegie, …
  • Electoral fraud, monopolistic practices, segregation, child labor, exploitation, …

“See, we are just like Rome. Our legislators are corrupt: our politicians are unprincipled; our rich men are ambitious and unscrupulous. Our Newspapers have been purchased and gagged; our colleagues have been bribed; our churches have been cowed. Our masses are sinking into degradation and misery; our ruling classes are becoming wanton and cynical.”

  • David Graham Philips: “The Treason of the Senate”
  • Theodore Roosevelt
  • The Gridiron Speech (Gridiron Club, March 1906)

“In Bunyan’s “Pilgrim’s Progress” you may recall the description of the Man with the Muck Rake, the man who could look no way but downward, with the muck rake in his hand; who was offered a celestial crown for his muck rake, but who would neither look up nor regard the crown he was offered, but continued to rake to himself the filth of the floor.”

Ida M. Tarbell  (1857-1944)

  • Franklin Tarbell (independent oil producer in Pennsylvania).
  • Allegheny College
  • The History of the Standard Oil Company (1904)
  • Attorney General Charles Bonaparte charged Standard Oil with “conspiracy to restrain and monopolize commerce in petroleum”.
  • The Supreme Court decided against the Standard Oil Company in 1911
  • Exxon, Mobil, Boron, Chevron,  and Amoco

Upton Sinclair (1878-1968)

  • College of the City of New York (CCNY)
  • The Jungle
    • (Publishing Co. New York, 1906)
  • Muckrake Man
    • The Moneychangers (1908), King Coal (1917), The Profits of Religion (1918), The Brass Check (1919), The Goose-steps (1919), Oil! (1927), Money Writes (1927), Boston (1928)
  • Lenny Budd series
  • Pulitzer Prize for Dragon’s Teeth
  • Finalist for the Nobel Prize

Seymour Hersh (1937 – )

  • University of Chicago
  • Associated Press (1964)
  • My Lai story (1969) – Lieutenant William Calley – Dispatch News Service
  • Pulitzer Prize for international reporting in 1970
  • CIA operations in Cambodia, Pakistan, Chile, Angola
  • The Dark Side of Camelot (1997)
  • Abu Ghraib (New Yorker, May, 2004)

Bob Woodward (1943 -) / Carl Bernstein (1944 – )

  • Watergate
  • 225 stories between 1972-1976
  • Monday, June 18th, 1972 – burglary at the Democratic headquarters in Washington
  • August 8, 1974 – Richard Nixon resigned
  • “Deep Throat”

All the President’s Men (1976)

  • Director: Alan J. Pakula (1928-1998)
  • Based on the novel by Woodward and Bernstein
  • Screenplay: William Goldman
  • Dustin Hoffman, Robert Redford

Questions to keep in mind:

1 – First, we have to think about the independence of the press. This factor is essential in a free society. Which are the mechanisms that protect this independence, as portrayed in the functioning of the Washington Post? 

2 – Second, As important as the free expression are the fact checking procedures within the newspaper. How is the source checking process described in the film?

3 – What is the role of public opinion? Can public opinion be considered a “character” in this film?

4 – And finally, I am interested in your opinion. Do you think that investigative journalists, in this case Bernstein and Woodward, deserve the status of social heroes?