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Newspaper
I INTRODUCTION
Newspaper, publication usually issued on a daily or weekly basis, the main function of which is to
report news. Many newspapers also furnish special information to readers, such as weather reports,
television schedules, and listings of stock prices. They provide commentary on politics, economics, and
arts and culture, and sometimes include entertainment features, such as comics and crossword
puzzles. In nearly all cases and in varying degrees, newspapers depend on commercial advertising for
their income.
Newspaper publishers estimate that nearly six out of ten adults in the United States and Canada read
a newspaper every day, and seven out of ten read a paper each weekend. By the time they see a
newspaper, most people have already learned about breaking news stories on television or radio.
Readers rely on newspapers to provide detailed background information and analysis, which television
and radio newscasts rarely offer. Newspapers not only inform readers that an event happened but also
help readers understand what led up to the event and how it will affect the world around them.
The staff of a large newspaper works under the constant pressure of deadlines to bring news to
readers as quickly as human energy and technological devices permit. Reporters, photographers,
artists, and editors compile articles and graphics—sometimes in just a few hours. Page designers
assemble articles, photos, illustrations, advertisements, and eye-catching headlines into page layouts,
then rush their work to the printer. Printing technicians may work through the night operating printing
presses that can churn out more than 60,000 copies per hour.
Newspapers trace their roots to handwritten news sheets posted daily in the public marketplaces of
ancient Rome. The first printed newspapers appeared in China during the Tang dynasty (AD 618-907).
These newspapers were printed from carved wood blocks. Precursors to modern papers first appeared
in Venice, Italy, in the middle of the 14th century. Newspapers as known today, complete with
advertising and a mixture of political, economic, and social news and commentary, emerged in Britain
in the mid-18th century.
II KINDS OF NEWSPAPERS
Most newspapers are printed on grainy, lightweight paper, called newsprint, which comes in one of
two sizes. Broadsheet newspaper pages measure 33 cm by 55 cm (13 in by 21.5 in). The pages of
tabloid newspapers measure about 25 cm by 37 cm (10 in by 14.5 in). The term tabloid is sometimes
used to refer to newspapers that carry stories about celebrities, crime, or scandal under
sensationalized headlines. However, any kind of newspaper can be printed on tabloid-sized pages.
Newspapers publish with varying frequency. Some come out every day or even twice a day. Other
newspapers print once a week, once a month, four times a year, or even less often. Newspapers also
differ in focus. General-circulation newspapers print news of interest to a broad audience, while
special-interest papers target a more specific audience.
A Daily Newspapers
Daily newspapers print at least one edition every weekday. Morning editions, printed in the predawn
hours, cover newsworthy events of the previous day. Evening editions are printed in the afternoon and
include information about events that happened earlier that day. Most dailies also offer a larger
weekend edition. In Canada, weekend editions generally come out on Saturdays. In the United States,
Sunday editions are typical.
Stories featured in dailies generally cover a wide range of issues that appeal to an audience in a
specific geographic region, such as a particular metropolitan area. Daily general-circulation
newspapers average about 65 pages during the week and more than 200 pages in the weekend
edition. Commercial advertising takes up about two-thirds of both weekday and weekend editions, and
news and features fill the remaining third.
Most daily newspapers divide their content into separately folded sections. Newspapers typically have
sections for local news, sports, arts and entertainment, business, and classified advertising. The
newspapers’ front page features eye-catching headlines and photographs that pique readers’ interests
and direct them to stories featured in the inner sections. The first page of each section follows the
same general model to entice readers to explore that section’s contents.
In the United States in 2000, about 1,500 daily newspapers printed a total of 56 million copies, and on
average, each copy was read by at least 2 people. Canada, which has just over one-tenth of the
American population, had about one-tenth the number of daily papers. In 2001, 105 Canadian daily
newspapers printed a total of more than 5 million copies each day.
The newspaper with the largest circulation in the United States is USA Today, with a national
circulation of about 2.3 million. Other newspapers with large circulation are the New York Times and
the Los Angeles Times. The Toronto Star is Canada’s most widely read daily newspaper, followed by
the national Globe and Mail.
Many large daily newspapers publish regional editions that cater to the population of a smaller
geographical area. For example, each weekday the Wall Street Journal publishes five different
editions—three national regional editions, an edition in Europe, and an edition in Asia. Dailies in large
metropolitan areas may publish a city edition as well as suburban editions to circulate among readers
who live outside the city. Dailies in large urban areas also may publish two or more city editions, each
delivering news and advertisements directed at different neighborhoods or boroughs.
Most North American daily newspapers print one edition a day and circulate fewer than 100,000
copies. In 2000 about 100 newspapers sold more than 100,000 copies per day in the United States,
and 10 Canadian papers had daily sales of 100,000 copies or more. Some papers, especially those in
small towns or rural areas, circulate only a few thousand copies per day.
B Weekly Newspapers
Weekly newspapers publish once a week. General-circulation weekly papers often contain news of
interest to people in a smaller area than that of a daily paper, an area such as a small city, town, or
neighborhood. They feature less national or international news, focusing instead on local happenings.
High school sporting events, traffic accidents, and actions by local government frequently make front-
page news in weekly papers.
Many large metropolitan areas also have weekly papers. In urban settings, weekly papers often
provide more detailed analysis of local news and politics than daily papers do. They may contain in-
depth commentary on the local arts scene and include comprehensive schedules for music and theater
productions.
Almost 7,600 weekly newspapers circulated in the United States in 2000, each selling an average of
more than 9,000 copies every week. Canada had about 1,100 weeklies, a number that included many
community papers, which publish twice a week.
C Special-Interest Papers
Special-interest newspapers concentrate on news of interest to a particular group. An ethnic
community, for example, may have a newspaper that informs readers of news and events in that
community. Many special-interest newspapers are printed in a language other than English.
Corporations or divisions of corporations often publish their own newspapers, as do unions and trade
organizations, such as those for woodworkers, airline pilots, and people in the fashion industry. Other
special-interest papers feature news about a specific topic, such as rock music or sports.
Special-interest papers may come out daily, weekly, monthly, or even less frequently. Daily special-
interest newspapers cover daily events from the perspective of members in that group. The Wall
Street Journal, for example, contains detailed financial news that appeals to members of the business
community. Ethnic communities in urban areas may have a daily special-interest paper that examines
local, national, and international news in terms of how it affects their population. Large universities
often have daily papers. Arts newspapers, such as newspapers devoted to theater or music, often
come out weekly. They include critiques of art exhibits, performances, new music albums, and
recently published books. They typically also publish schedules of upcoming events, such as concerts
and poetry readings.
III HOW A NEWSPAPER IS PRODUCED
Most newspapers follow roughly the same procedure when putting together an edition of the paper.
First, news editors assign newsworthy events to reporters. The reporters research the events and
write their own stories on computers. Copy editors edit the stories and write headlines for them. The
stories go back to the news editor, who checks over the stories and headlines. Meanwhile,
photographers shoot pictures to accompany the stories, and graphic artists create any charts and
diagrams that that will accompany the stories in the paper.
Advertising professionals raise money for operational costs by selling the space in the newspaper to
advertisers. Artists, working with computer representations of pages on which space has been blocked
out for advertising, determine placement of articles, photographs, and illustrations. They send the
finished computer layouts to the newspaper’s printing facilities, where printing technicians use state-
of-the art equipment to convert electronic files into finished newspapers. People in the newspaper’s
circulation department ensure that the freshly printed newspapers arrive at newsstands, doorsteps,
and newspaper dispensing machines as quickly as possible.
A Creating Articles and Features
News stories, illustrations, and features are the responsibility of the paper’s news staff. The news staff
of a major daily paper usually includes reporters, editors, photographers, and artists. Most
newspapers supplement the work of their news staff with content provided by news organizations
called wire services.
A1 Reporters
Reporters gather information about newsworthy events and write stories that describe them. Some
reporters routinely monitor particular areas of the news, such as happenings at city hall, the police
department, or in court. General-assignment reporters cover a wide variety of news events.
Investigative reporters search out and expose corruption in government, business, labor, education,
and other sectors of society. Many reporters cover only daily events—meetings of a city council, press
conferences, fires, and accidents—while others work for weeks to develop in-depth articles.
A few of the world’s largest newspapers also have offices in their country’s capital that cover news
about their nation’s leader, the government, and national organizations. They may station reporters in
large cities around the country and foreign correspondents in important world capitals. Other reporters
travel to key world events, such as the Olympic Games and regions of political unrest, where they
spend extended periods reporting on events as they occur. These correspondents send stories to their
home offices via facsimile or the Internet, or dictate stories over the telephone. Using these speedy
methods ensures that news will appear in the hometown newspaper as soon as the events happen.
A2 Wire Services
In addition to receiving reports from their own staffs, newspapers also subscribe to wire services, such
as the Associated Press (AP) or Reuters (see Reuters Holdings PLC). Wire services distribute up-to-
the-minute news stories and pictures to subscribing newspapers. Newspapers may also run stories
and features provided by newspaper syndicates. Like wire services, newspaper syndicates offer their
content to other newspapers for a fee. For example, the New York Times Company and the
Washington Post Company, among others, sell their news reports and features to papers in the United
States and abroad.
A3 Editors
Different types of editors contribute different aspects to news stories. An editor-in-chief (sometimes
called an executive editor) directs the news staff and assumes ultimate responsibility for the
newspaper’s news content. Managing editors handle the day-to-day operations of the news staff. News
editors work closely with reporters to identify which events merit coverage in the paper and to
determine the length of the stories. Most major dailies have several different news editors. For
example, the newspaper may have different news editors for local, national, and international news,
sports, business, and arts.
Copy editors check over reporters’ stories to ensure that they are understandable and free of errors.
They may request more information from the reporter if parts of the story are unclear or cut back
stories that are too long. The copy editors also write a short, catchy headline for the story. Headlines
attract readers and summarize the story’s contents.
Page editors determine where stories will appear in the paper. They usually place stories covering
particularly important or interesting events on the front page and usually relegate stories of interest to
fewer people to the paper’s inner pages. Using specialized computer software, page editors finalize the
placement of stories, headlines, and features on each page of the paper.
Editorial page and opinion editors write editorials. Unlike news stories, which strive to present the
facts in an unbiased manner, newspaper editorials and comments reflect the opinions of the paper’s
editorial team, publisher, or owner. Large papers have several editorial writers. They may also select
additional writers to provide a balance of political and social views. The columns of many of the best-
known editorial writers are syndicated to hundreds of newspapers around the country. The editorial
pages also include a selection of letters from readers. Readers write letters to the editor to express
their own opinions about newsworthy events or about the way stories were covered in previous
editions of the newspaper.
A4 Graphic Artists and Photographers
A team of artists and photographers creates images to bring news stories to life. An art director works
closely with newspaper editors to identify illustrations and photographs that will help readers
conceptualize information contained in news stories. Graphic artists create any charts, maps, or
diagrams that are needed. Staff photographers take pictures of local people and events featured in the
news. When newspapers carry stories about events that happen in other cities, they may hire
freelance photographers stationed in that city or pay a fee to use photographs from a wire service.
Artists that specialize in page layout and design also work on newspapers. An artist, or team of artists,
works with page editors to arrange news stories, headlines, photographs, illustrations, and
advertisements into pages. Page editors and designers strive to make newspaper pages both visually
appealing and easy to understand.
B Business Operations
The business division of the newspaper raises the money required to produce the paper and oversees
printing and distribution. Advertising accounts for approximately 65 percent of American newspaper
revenues, and income from circulation provides the remaining 35 percent. In Canada, advertising
revenues cover up to 70 percent of an average newspaper’s operating budget. The biggest expense in
the publication of large papers is newsprint, which amounts to about one-third of the total budget.
Other major expenses include computers and machinery, salaries and benefits for newspaper
employees, office space, equipment and supplies, utilities, and advertising.
B1 Advertising
Advertisers spend more of their money advertising in newspapers than in any other medium.
Newspapers offer two different types of advertisements: display ads and classified ads. Display ads
share page space with news and features. They generally feature illustrations, photographs, or catchy
phrases in large print to attract the attention of readers. Teams of specialists sell newspaper display
ads to local and national businesses. Advertisers pay based on how much space their ad requires on
the page. They can purchase full-page display ads, which fill an entire page of the newspaper, or
fractions of pages. The price of an advertisement depends on the size of the newspaper’s circulation. A
full-page display ad in the Wall Street Journal, for example, cost nearly $168,000 in 2001.
Newspapers with smaller circulations charge less for display ad space because companies assume that
fewer people will see their advertisements. A full-page display ad in a weekday edition of the Seattle
Times, which had a circulation of about 226,000 in 2001, cost up to $24,000.
Classified advertisements are small notices with a variety of offerings, such as apartment rentals, job
opportunities, and personal property for sale. Classified ads also include personal ads—short messages
from individual people or groups. Personal ads may be directed at a single reader or at multiple
readers. Unlike display ads, which appear in-line with news stories and features, classified ads appear
in their own section, the classifieds. Many newspapers, especially small weeklies and special-interest
papers, offer their readers some types of classified advertising free. Large newspapers charge by the
word, line, or inch for classified advertising, and as with display ads, prices depend on circulation. In
2002 the national edition of the Wall Street Journal charged $588 for one inch of a column in their
residential real estate classified section. The Seattle Times charged about $183 for the same amount
of space for residential real estate classified advertising in their weekday edition.
B2 Printing
After the page designer determines the final page layout on the computer, the pages are ready to be
printed. Most newspapers use a printing technique called offset lithography, a method capable of
producing more than 60,000 copies of a 65-page paper per hour (see Printing Techniques:
Lithography).
The page editor sends electronic copies of the pages to a printing technician, who uses a special
computer to create film negatives for each page. The technician transfers the page images to plastic
or aluminum plates using a camera that shines ultra-violet light through the negative onto the plate.
The light penetrates the clear parts of the negative, exposing only the printing portions of the plate.
The technician then attaches the plate to one of the cylinders of a large printing press.
When in operation, a printing press rotates continuously, first coating the plate with water, which
adheres to the nonprinting areas of the plate, then smearing the plate with ink that sticks only to the
nonwatered portions of the plate. The cylinders rewater and reink the plate as they spin, pulling a long
roll of newsprint, called a web, through the press as they do. When the plates roll over the newsprint,
they transfer quick-drying ink to its surface. A typical modern newspaper printing press prints both
sides of a newsprint web several pages wide. It also incorporates automatic cutters and folders and
may include an inserting machine that arranges sections one inside the other.
Papers with multiple editions, such as the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times, send
computerized pages to two or more printing presses at a time, often in different geographical regions.
These decentralized printing facilities enable newspapers to distribute copies to cities across the
continent, and in some cases the world, at more or less the same time.
B3 Distribution
The circulation department supervises the distribution of the newspaper. Most newspapers offer home
delivery. Trucks carry freshly printed papers to regional distribution centers. Newspaper carriers pick
up bundles of newspapers from the distribution center, then deliver them to the homes of paying
subscribers along a predetermined route. In other cases, distribution trucks deliver bundles of
newspapers directly to the carriers. Carriers are paid based on the number of papers they deliver. In
some areas, especially small cities and rural areas, mostly middle and high school students deliver
papers, often on foot or via bicycle. In large cities, paper carriers are usually adults, who travel their
routes by car so they can deliver more papers per day.
Trucks deliver newspapers to newsstands and newspaper dispensing machines located in areas where
people congregate, such as airports, bus stations, and train stations. Newsstands and newspaper
dispensing machines also dot the street corners of medium- and large-sized cities. Many retail outlets,
such as grocery stores and coffee shops, also offer newspapers for sale. The big, catchy headlines on
a newspaper’s front page serve to catch the attention of passersby in these and other public venues.
Circulation managers try to increase the number of people who buy the paper because newspapers
depend on selling copies of the paper for more than 30 percent of their revenue. They may sponsor
special promotional prices for subscription or give away copies of the paper to attract new readers.
IV ORIGINS OF NEWSPAPERS
Before the invention of printing machines, people spread news by word of mouth, written letters, or
public notices. As more people learned to read and write, news reports gained added reliability.
Ancient Rome had a particularly sophisticated system for circulating written news. Its publishing
practices centered on acta diurna (daily events), handwritten news sheets posted by the government
in the public marketplace from the year 59 BC to at least AD 222. Acta diurna announced news of
politics, trials, scandals, military campaigns, and executions. In China, early government-produced
news sheets, called tipao, circulated among court officials during the Han dynasty (202 BC-AD 220). At
some point during the Tang dynasty (618-907), the Chinese used carved wooden blocks to print tipao,
making them the first printed newspapers in history.
A printing press that employed movable type was developed in Europe in 1450, and European officials
soon began using it to publish news (see Printing). Short pamphlets, called news books, informed the
public of royal weddings, victorious battles, or other newsworthy events. News ballads recounted news
events in verse form. News books and news ballads were circulated sporadically in Europe and the
American colonies, usually when officials wanted to inform the public of important events.
V THE FIRST NEWSPAPERS
Newspapers published under the same name on a regular schedule first appeared in Venice, Italy, in
the 16th century. Handwritten newspapers called avisi, or gazettes, appeared weekly as early as
1566. They reported news brought to Venice by traders, such as accounts of wars and politics in other
parts of Italy and Europe. Venetian gazettes established a style of journalism that most early printed
newspapers followed—short sets of news items written under the name of the city they came from and
the date on which they were sent. The oldest surviving copies of European newspapers are of two
weeklies published in German in 1609—one in Strassburg (now Strasbourg, France) by Johann
Carolus, the other in Wolfenbüttel, Germany, by Lucas Schulte.
Newspapers spread rapidly throughout Europe. One-page weeklies appeared in Basel, Switzerland, by
1610; in Frankfurt, Germany, and Vienna, Austria, by 1615; in Hamburg, Germany, by 1616; in
Berlin, Germany, by 1617; and in Amsterdam, Netherlands, by 1618. The first newspaper printed in
England appeared in 1621, and France produced a newspaper in 1631. However, printers in
Amsterdam, a center of trade and of political and religious tolerance in the early 17th century,
exported weeklies in French and in English as early as 1620. The first continuously published English
newspaper was the Weekly News, published from 1622 to 1641. Italy's first printed weekly appeared
by 1639, and Spain had one by 1641.
Early English newspapers were generally printed in one of two formats: in the style of the Dutch
papers or in the style of the early German weeklies. Dutch-style papers compressed news stories onto
four or fewer pages, while news in German-style weeklies covered up to 24 pages. English publishers
first used the Dutch style but switched to the German style by 1622.
English newspapers were among the first in the world to use headlines to attract readers and
woodcuts to illustrate stories. English newspapers also set new business standards. They hired women
as reporters, printed advertisements as a source of revenue, and paid newsboys, or more commonly,
newsgirls, to sell papers in the streets.
The fledgling English press faced censorship throughout much of the 17th century. Early newspapers
called diurnals—the predecessors of today’s dailies—featured news from all over Europe and
occasionally America or Asia. However, government officials discouraged reporting on local matters. In
addition, the government tightly regulated print shops. In England, as in most other European
countries, the government required printers to have licenses to print the news. Printers could lose
their licenses if they published anything offensive to authorities.
The first major change in this arrangement came in the years before the outbreak of the English Civil
War (1642-1648). As Parliament, under the leadership of Oliver Cromwell, struggled with King Charles
I, national news assumed a new importance. Newspapers, liberated by the breakdown in the king's
authority, began to feel free enough to discuss domestic politics. The first English newspaper to
attempt to report on national news was the Heads of Several Proceedings in This Present Parliament, a
weekly that appeared in 1641. The public’s appetite for domestic news grew steadily, and soon a
number of papers covered national politics and other previously censored topics. In 1644 writer John
Milton articulated the ideal of freedom of the press with great eloquence in his essay Areopagitica.
However, when Oliver Cromwell consolidated his power after Charles I was beheaded in 1649, he
cracked down on the press. He allowed only a few authorized newspapers to be printed.
After the monarchy was restored under King Charles II in 1660, the government gradually ended
licensing provisions and other restrictions. The English press published in an atmosphere of
considerable freedom—as long as it did not criticize the government. During the upheaval of the
Glorious Revolution in 1688 (when Parliament deposed King James II in favor of William of Orange),
the English press burst free of nearly all government restrictions. The law that required printers to
obtain licenses lapsed in 1695. Belief in the right of the press to question and criticize government
eventually took hold in England and migrated to its American colonies.
VI THE NEWSPAPER IN THE UNITED STATES
The first newspaper published in the American colonies, Publick Occurrences Both Forreign and
Domestick, launched in 1690 in Boston, Massachusetts. The colonial government suppressed its
publication after just one issue. Fourteen years passed before another newspaper was published in the
colonies.
A Colonial Papers
The Boston News-Letter, established in 1704 by John Campbell, became the first regularly published
colonial newspaper. The paper contained financial and foreign news from English newspapers and
recorded local births, deaths, and social events. It rarely challenged colonial authority because the
governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony retained the right to censor any of its contents.
The New-England Courant, first printed in 1721 by James Franklin, introduced coverage of political
debate in its first issue. The paper presented the controversy surrounding smallpox inoculations, which
were used for the first time in Boston that year to fight an epidemic. Cotton Mather, a prominent
Congregational minister and scholar, supported inoculation; Franklin did not.
The next year, the Courant took on the colonial government, accusing it of failing to do enough to
protect the area from pirates. This crusade landed Franklin in jail. Later a court decreed that Franklin
be forbidden to print or publish the Courant. To evade this order, Franklin appointed his younger
brother Benjamin, then his apprentice, the paper's official publisher. Benjamin Franklin made the most
of this opportunity, publishing humorous social commentary under the pen name Silence Dogwood
along with reports on political events. He continued to learn the trades of printer and publisher, and in
1729 he took control of the Pennsylvania Gazette in Philadelphia.
The first New York City newspaper, the Gazette, was founded by William Bradford in 1725. Several
others followed, including the New York Weekly Journal, edited by the German-American printer John
Peter Zenger. When Zenger published criticism of the British colonial governor of New York and his
administration, he was arrested on charges of seditious libel. Zenger was tried and found not guilty.
The trial of John Peter Zenger created an important precedent for the establishment of a free press in
America.
B Revolutionary Period
In 1750, 12 newspapers were being published in the American colonies, which then had a total
population of about 1 million. By 1775 the population had increased to 2.5 million, and the number of
newspapers had jumped to 48. Most of these papers were published weekly, contained only four
pages, and typically had a circulation of fewer than 400 copies. The papers printed more essays than
news. The essays emphasized the importance of individual freedom, anticipating the American
Revolution (1775-1783).
The major limitation on press freedom in Britain in the 18th century and the first half of the 19th
century was the stamp tax. This tax had the effect of raising the price of newspapers to the point
where few people could afford to buy them. By making newspapers more expensive, the stamp tax
reduced the number of newspaper readers. In this way the British government limited the power of
the press by limiting its circulation.
The Stamp Act, passed by the British Parliament in 1765, would have placed a similar tax on American
newspapers. This legislation required that American paper products, including newspapers, bear a
British government stamp as proof of tax payment. Many Americans rebelled against the act, which
was to take effect on November 1, 1765. As that day approached, newspapers such as the
Pennsylvania Journal ceased publication, announcing that they were 'EXPIRING: In Hopes of a
Resurrection to Life Again.' Then, cautiously, the newspapers began appearing again, without the
stamp. The Stamp Act proved unenforceable and was soon repealed, but it had the unintended effect
of uniting many editors and publishers in support of independence from Britain.
During successive waves of colonial protest against the British, newspapers published woodcut prints
of divided snakes representing the weakness of the colonies if they remained divided, and woodcuts of
coffins (designed by American patriot Paul Revere) representing the victims of the Boston Massacre.
Colonial papers also published revolutionist essays by American patriots John Dickinson and Thomas
Paine. Papers further demonstrated their revolutionary zeal by publicizing the names of people who
weakened prospects for independence, such as those who continued to import British goods in spite of
organized boycotts.
In 1773 colonists gathered in the house of a newspaper editor, Benjamin Edes of the Boston Gazette,
to organize the Boston Tea Party—a protest against Parliament’s decision to tax tea imported to the
colonies. Among the other leading newspapers in the struggle against British policies were the
Massachusetts Spy, published by Isaiah Thomas, and John Holt's New York Journal. Two women,
Sarah and Mary Katherine Goddard, published the Providence Gazette, another anti-British voice
during these years. American patriot Samuel Adams, who often edited the Boston Gazette, organized
the Committees of Correspondence, groups of colonists who garnered public support for
independence. In 1776 the front pages of colonial papers carried the Declaration of Independence, an
official validation of the fight for independence that had embroiled colonists and British soldiers for
more than a year.
During the Revolutionary War, newspapers reported military developments to an increasing number of
readers. Business generated by the war brought advertising revenue to the papers. While most
newspapers were staunchly proindependence, not all the colonial papers espoused anti-British
sentiments. James Rivington's New York Gazetteer gave voice to both the Tory, or pro-British, and the
patriot side in the ongoing conflict in what Rivington called his 'Ever Open and Uninfluenced Press.'
Despite their professed allegiance to the principle of a free press, the Sons of Liberty—a society of
influential American patriots—were infuriated by Rivington's paper. He responded by taking more
openly Tory positions. After the Revolution, the New York Gazetteer ceased operation, leaving a
largely uniform press in the newly independent colonies.
The new press, however, soon found itself deeply divided after the war—first, concerning the
ratification of the Articles of Confederation and, later, when the Constitution of the United States was
adopted. The conservative Federalists directly opposed the Anti-Federalists, or Democratic-
Republicans, who advocated the rights of states over a central, national leadership. One issue,
however, united the newspapers of the country: All supported the First Amendment to the
Constitution, which guarantees freedom of speech, religion, the right of assembly, and the right to
petition Congress. The First Amendment has endured many challenges since its inception, but it
remains the cornerstone of the free press in the United States.
The Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 called into question the freedom of the press. The Sedition Act
provided that a person could be fined or imprisoned for publishing false or malicious statements about
the president or Congress. The Federalists, who supported the law, used it to imprison editors who
opposed their policies. However, the Federalists did not invoke the same law against editors who
attacked Democratic-Republican policies, such as those of Thomas Jefferson. Reaction against this
repressive law helped Jefferson win the presidency in 1800 before it expired in 1801.
C Penny Press
The Pennsylvania Evening Post and Daily Advertiser, the first daily newspaper in the United States,
began publication in 1783 in Philadelphia. By 1800, 20 daily papers were in operation. The number
continued to increase in the first three decades of the 19th century as the Industrial Revolution spread
and spawned a new working class in the nation's growing cities. Until the 1830s newspapers focused
almost entirely on business and political news. Benjamin Henry Day changed this approach in 1833,
when he published the first edition of the New York Sun. Day filled his paper with reports of local
crime and violence, human-interest stories, and entertainment pieces and sold it for one penny. This
event marked the creation of the penny press, which dominated American journalism throughout the
rest of the 19th century.
The penny press owes much of its success to the invention of the cylinder press, which printed
newspapers quickly and cheaply (see Printing: Printing Presses). The cylinder press was first used in
the United States in 1825. Six years later New York industrialist Richard M. Hoe improved the cylinder
press by adding a second cylinder, and in 1846 he patented the first rotary press, which employed
several cylinders. By 1835 Day was using steam engines, first used in 1814 to drive the presses at the
Times in London, to print his rapidly growing Sun. Steam-driven rotary presses made it possible to
push newspaper sales much higher. The old style printing press could print perhaps 125 newspapers
in an hour. By 1851 the Sun's presses printed 18,000 copies in an hour. The New York Herald, the
New York Tribune, and the New York Times soon followed the Sun’s model. The penny press quickly
spread to other Eastern cities and across the country as the nation expanded westward.
D Newspapers in the 19th Century
The invention of the telegraph by Samuel Morse in 1837 dramatically improved the speed and
reliability of news reporting. Newspapers became the major customers of the telegraph companies.
The high cost of telegraph transmissions led to the formation of telegraph wire services, which
distributed stories to many different papers. The Associated Press, now one of the world’s leading wire
services, was founded as a cooperative venture by New York newspapers in 1848. The telegraph
enabled newspapers to fill their pages with news that happened the previous day in cities located
hundreds, then thousands, of miles away. With the successful completion of a transatlantic cable in
1866, American newspapers could print news from Europe with similar speed.
The rise of the wire services also tended to reduce the emphasis on personal opinion in news stories.
In addition, as editors and reporters embraced the ideals of science and realism in the late 19th
century, they began treating facts with a new respect. After Adolph Simon Ochs acquired the New
York Times in 1896, it became one of the world's foremost newspapers. Its reputation was based
more on the thoroughness of its reporting than on its editorials or positions on issues.
As newspapers competed with one another to increase circulation, publishers sought new methods to
attract readers. Publishers Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst began using drawings and
comic strips to enliven their newspapers. They also transformed their papers with coverage of
scandalous events and sensational stories. These tactics proved successful immediately, and a number
of other papers followed suit. Journalists and writers labeled papers that relied on sensational stories
or comic strips to attract readers yellow journalism, after the popular Hearst comic strip The Yellow
Kid.
Other changes also encouraged newspaper growth at the end of the 19th century. The development of
the first Linotype machine in the mid-1880s sped up typesetting by making possible the automatic
casting of entire lines of type (see Typesetting Equipment). The regular use of photographs in
newspapers, which began in 1897, also broadened readership. Improvements to the rotary press
drove newspaper circulation in large cities into the hundreds of thousands. By 1900 daily newspapers
in the United States numbered 2,326. Most large cities had several papers each, and many smaller
cities had at least two newspapers.
E Alternative Papers
Even in cities where a number of different papers were in circulation, many people felt newspapers did
not represent their interests or points of view. One solution for communities of immigrants who spoke
English as a second language was to publish newspapers in their native language. From 1794 to 1798,
French speakers in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, published the French-language newspaper Courrier
Français. Early Spanish-language newspapers appeared in New Orleans in 1808 and in Texas in 1813.
Beginning in 1828 members of the Cherokee Nation in northern Georgia published the first Native
American newspaper, the Cherokee Phoenix, in both Cherokee and English. The Jewish Daily Forward,
printed in Yiddish, first appeared in New York in 1897; by 1923 local editions were printed in 11 other
cities. Waves of immigration to American cities in the first decades of the 20th century increased
demand for foreign-language papers. According to one survey, the United States had 160 foreign-
language dailies in 1914 and a total of 1,323 foreign-language papers in 1917.
African Americans and their abolitionist supporters also sought alternatives to mainstream
newspapers. In 1827 John B. Russwurm and Reverend Samuel Cornish produced the first newspaper
published by African Americans in the United States, Freedom's Journal. 'We wish to plead our own
cause,' they wrote, 'too long have others spoken for us' (see African American History: Free Black
Population). Ten years later, Cornish became editor of the New York newspaper Colored American.
The abolitionist crusader William Lloyd Garrison founded the Liberator in 1831 with the expressed
purpose of producing a public backlash against slavery. The great African American writer and activist
Frederick Douglass started the North Star in 1847 to attack slavery. This publication later became
Frederick Douglass’ Weekly and was followed by Douglass’ Monthly, which originated as a supplement
to the Weekly.
Women’s rights activists also formed alternative papers to champion their cause. American reformer
Amelia Jenks Bloomer published the Lily from 1849 to 1859. Women’s rights activists Elizabeth Cady
Stanton and Susan B. Anthony published the Revolution from 1868 to 1871.
Socialist newspapers also boomed for a time in the United States, reaching a total circulation of 2
million in 1913. Many of these papers ceased publication during World War I (1914-1918), when
freedom of the press was severely curtailed. Many alternative publishers were tried under the
provisions of the Espionage Act of 1917 and amendments passed in 1918, which prohibited printed
attacks on the U.S. government.
F Concentration of Ownership
The number of newspapers published in the United States declined in the first half of the 20th century.
In many cases, stiff competition from other papers in the same city led newspapers to merge with the
competing papers. For example, New York City once had 20 daily newspapers, but by 1940 it had only
8. Also in 1940, 25 American cities with more than 100,000 residents had only 1 daily newspaper.
Ownership of many of the newspapers that survived shifted from local citizens to national chains.
American newspaper publishers Edward Wyllis Scripps and Milton Alexander McRae assembled the first
large newspaper chain, the Scripps-McRae League of Newspapers, in 1894. Three years later they
developed the Scripps-McRae Press Agency (now United Press International) to supply their chain with
articles. Scripps also established the first newspaper syndicate, the Newspaper Enterprise Association,
to provide his papers with comics and feature articles. By 1914 the Scripps-McRae League published
23 newspapers.
William Randolph Hearst assembled an even larger news media empire. Hearst owned 6 newspapers
in 1904. He steadily acquired more newspapers and related businesses, and by 1922 he owned 20
daily papers, 11 weeklies, 2 wire services, 6 magazines, and a newsreel company. Many people
viewed the trend towards chains and consolidation with concern. Fewer newspaper publishers meant
fewer editorial perspectives, a problem that magnified exponentially when newspaper publishers also
controlled the content of other publications in the same region.
G Competition from Radio and Television
The rise of radio and television broadcasting posed new competitive threats to newspapers. Radio
began offering the American public another source of news and entertainment as early as 1920. By
1929, 10 million American households had radios. Despite early efforts by newspaper publishers to
prevent radio stations from using news and stories distributed by the Associated Press, radio made
significant gains as a news medium. Radio reached the height of its influence during World War II
(1939-1945), when it carried war news from the battlefronts directly to the homes of millions of
listeners.
The arrival of television after World War II ended nearly two centuries of news reporting dominated by
newspapers. In 1940 one newspaper circulated in the United States for every two adults. Fifty years
later, far fewer Americans relied on newspapers as their primary news source. Cable and television
network news reporting had largely supplanted newspapers in this capacity. In one survey, only 9
percent of Americans said they kept up with news of the Persian Gulf War (1990-1991) primarily
through newspapers.
Television and radio stations had an advantage over newspapers—they could broadcast breaking news
stories minutes after they occurred. American newspapers struggled to maintain their place in the
world of news reporting. Realizing that most of their readers had already heard breaking news stories
on television, they began covering more news in greater detail than did television and radio news.
Newspaper articles provided historical context for current events and in-depth analysis from two or
more perspectives.
H Government-Press Conflict
In the 1960s Americans were divided over the wisdom of the Vietnam War (1959-1975). During this
period, unquestioned loyalty to the American cause fell under criticism. The concept of press freedom
expanded to assume an almost adversarial relationship between press and government. This
relationship climaxed in 1971, when the New York Times published the Pentagon Papers. This
publication gave Americans a look behind the scenes at government planning and policies that led to
the U.S. role in the Vietnam War. When the government tried to prevent publication of this material,
the Supreme Court of the United States upheld the right of the newspaper to print it.
Publication of the Pentagon Papers heightened interest in investigative reporting. No longer content to
report only what the government said it was doing, newspaper reporters sought to report with
authority what the government actually did. Reporters Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, then
working at the Washington Post, showed the world how powerful investigative reporting could be when
they reported the details of the Watergate scandal to the American public in 1973. Their story
revealed a pattern of corruption in the administration of President Richard M. Nixon. These revelations
sparked a series of events, including a grand jury investigation of the burglary and wiretapping of the
Democratic Party’s national campaign headquarters, that culminated with the resignation of President
Nixon in 1974.
VII THE NEWSPAPER IN CANADA
The French colonial government in Canada did not permit printing presses to be established during its
roughly 100-year tenure. France formally ceded its Canadian territory to Britain in the French and
Indian War (1754-1763). Canada’s newspaper history dates to the early years of British colonialism in
the mid- to late 18th century.
A British Colonial Period
As the British gained control of the territories in Canada, a few American newspaper printers moved
north to set up shop in Canada. John Bushell, a printer originally from Boston, introduced the first
Canadian newspaper, the Halifax Gazette, in Halifax, Nova Scotia, on March 23, 1752. Two printers
from Philadelphia established the first bilingual newspaper, Québec Gazette (now the weekly Québec
Telegraph-Chronicle), in Québec City, Québec, in 1764. Several other papers followed, and by the end
of the 18th century residents of eastern Canada had several newspapers to choose from.
The earliest Canadian newspapers depended on the government for revenue. As did early newspapers
in Britain, colonial papers consisted primarily of foreign news and government announcements. They
took care not to publish material that might offend public officials for fear of losing financial backing.
However, settlers from Britain and the United States brought changes to population demographics in
Canada in the early 19th century. Canadian newspapers grew at a rapid pace to meet the demands of
a rapidly emerging merchant class. Independent-minded editors began turning to commercial
advertisements as a revenue source rather than to the government. This select group of newspapers
grew less dependent on government approval of their publishing practices.
B Confederation Debates
Many Canadian newspapers in the 19th century remained allied with political parties. The most
debated issue of this period was that of confederation—that is, the creation of a single dominion (a
locally autonomous state within the British Empire) uniting the British colonies in North America (see
Confederation of Canada). Canadian statesman and journalist George Brown launched the Toronto
Globe (now the Globe and Mail) in 1844 as a tool for propagating his political views. Brown founded
the Globe as a voice of the Reform Party (also called the Liberal Party), which advocated changing
Canada’s status to that of a dominion of Britain. The Globe began with a weekly circulation of 300 and
by 1853 had a daily circulation of 6,000. Several other politicians followed Brown’s lead, and by the
end of the 19th century, newspapers across Canada espoused the political ideology of one political
party or another. Most large cities supported two newspapers—one liberal and one conservative.
C 20th Century
Newspapers across Canada remained strongly political into the 20th century. But while partisanship
remained, fewer papers relied solely on the government or political parties for financing. Publishers
turned increasingly to advertising as a revenue source, and by the close of the first decade of the 20th
century, large city daily papers covered as much as 80 percent of their operating budgets with
advertising revenue.
In 1873 there were 47 daily newspapers in Canada; by 1913 that number had increased to 113.
Canadian newspaper publishers benefited from rising literacy rates. To attract new readers, Canadian
newspapers emphasized local news and short human-interest stories. Sales grew even higher as
Canada’s railway network expanded, enabling publishers to distribute newspapers across previously
impractical distances.
After 1915, however, the number of daily newspapers in Canada dropped steadily. Competition for
readers and advertising dollars was fierce, and many newspapers struggled to make ends meet.
Publishers of failing newspapers merged operations with successful newspapers in their towns, a
phenomenon that accelerated markedly as the century progressed. By 1950 the four largest
publishing conglomerates controlled almost 40 percent of the newspapers circulated in Canada.
In Canada, as in the United States, the introduction of radio in the 1920s, then television in the
1950s, derailed newspapers from the dominant position in the news media. Newspapers responded by
increasing analysis and historical background of the events that they covered. Many also decreased
their coverage of national and international news and expanded their local news sections. Surveys
show that Canadians prefer television for international and national news, but most rely on
newspapers for coverage of local events. Circulation of small community newspapers grew
substantially in the late 20th century. In 1971, 3.8 million Canadians read a community newspaper
each week. In 1999, that number topped 10.6 million.
VIII THE GLOBAL PRESS
In modern times, newspapers that share a similar structure and function are published all over the
world. This global press traces its origin to British papers of the 18th century. Though threatened by
censorship in the years preceding, during, and following the world wars, the global press maintained
the tradition of freedom of the press first established in London.
A The British Model
The first recognizably modern papers—depending on advertising and newspaper sales for revenue and
providing a mixture of political, economic, and social news and commentary—emerged in Britain in the
mid-18th century. As the first country to undergo the Industrial Revolution, Britain was uniquely able
to provide the complex system of distribution networks, large urban markets, and advertisers
necessary to make newspapers profitable enterprises.
By the mid-19th century, newspapers based on the British model circulated in many large cities
around the globe. Most of these papers were the products of an expanding British Empire. The Toronto
Globe launched in Canada in 1844, for example, and the Melbourne Age started up in Australia in
1854. The British also exerted their newspaper influence on the Indian subcontinent. The first local-
language newspaper, the Urdu Akhbar, was first printed in 1836 in what is now Pakistan. The British
Empire in India sparked a range of English-language newspapers by the latter half of the century,
including the Times of India in Bombay, the Statesman in Calcutta (now Kolkata), and the Civil and
Military Gazette in Lahore. The British model also spread to Latin America in the early 19th century. El
Mercurio began circulation in Valparaiso, Chile, in 1827, and Peru’s El Comercio printed its first edition
in 1839.
During the 19th century, the British model became far more than the technical process of printing,
financing, and distributing newspapers; it evolved into a political presence. The Times of London set
the standard for a global press. It defined the principle of freedom of the press—the right to criticize
the government and to campaign vigorously for its own political views.
The spread of literacy and primary education promised a larger audience. In addition, the commercial
success of the Times and its profits, essential to the maintenance of editorial independence, inspired
competitors to seek even larger profits. In an effort to attract a broader audience, competitors of the
Times featured brief stories written in a simple style, illustrations, and more coverage of sports and
local affairs. They also moved interesting news stories to the front page of the paper. Most 20th-
century general-circulation newspapers adopted these modifications.
B Freedom of the Press Following World War I
After World War I ended in 1918, many governments sought to control or crush independent
newspapers. As Italy fell under the Fascist rule of Benito Mussolini, Milan’s Corriere della Sera
(Evening Courier) decried the dictator’s actions and policies. The paper launched a prolonged
investigation of the murder of Socialist politician Giacomo Matteoti by Fascist thugs and eventually
placed blame for the killing firmly on Mussolini himself. The paper’s offices were firebombed, and
newsstands that sold the paper were attacked. Advertisers received warnings of official retaliation if
they advertised in Corriere rather than in Mussolini’s newspaper Il Popolo d’Itlalia (The People of
Italy). In 1925 Mussolini forced Corriere’s publisher to resign. The paper fell under the authority of
Mussolini’s new press bureau, and like all the other Italian newspapers of the time, tamely adhered to
the bureau’s restrictions on press freedom.
In Germany, Adolf Hitler, who assumed power in 1933, appointed Paul Joseph Goebbels as minister of
propaganda and national enlightenment. In this capacity, Goebbels tightly controlled the dissemination
of all news. The Nazi Party seized control of the once-independent Wolff news agency, renaming it the
German Information Agency. Goebbels also ensured that the Nazi Party newspapers, Völkischer
Beobachter (the People’s Observer) and Der Angriff (the Attack), and the virulently anti-Semitic
journal Der Sturmer (the Stormer), received newsprint allocations and official advertising.
The new model of the press as a tool of ideology and government, in direct contrast to the
independent tradition established by the Times of London, was perfected by Vladimir Lenin in the
Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) following the Russian Revolution of 1917. As the first leader
of the USSR, Lenin argued that Soviet newspapers should be tools for social control, and he strictly
controlled the information they published.
C Post-World War II
After World War II, the victorious Allies established several major papers in the occupied countries of
Europe and Asia. To greater and lesser degrees, these papers became mouthpieces for opposing sides
in the Cold War, the 40-year period of hostility between the United States and the USSR that followed
World War II.
In Paris, after the Allies drove the Germans out in 1944, the new liberation government of General
Charles de Gaulle established Le Monde (the World) as France’s primary newspaper. The French
government supported the paper with generous subsidies of newsprint and advertising. The ambiguity
of the paper’s role–the fact that it promised freedom from government control but also was the
government-sponsored journal of France—raised serious issues about press independence.
In Italy, members of the British and American armies reestablished Corriere della Sera after the fall of
Mussolini in 1943. The first editor of the new Corriere supported British interests in Italy to such an
extent that he took his early news columns verbatim from the foreign broadcasts of the British
Broadcasting Corporation.
In the aftermath of World War II, official news agencies—such as TASS in the USSR and the German
News Service in East Germany—strictly controlled news material throughout the Communist world.
The Soviet Army censored newspapers in Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Rumania,
and Bulgaria. Communist governments in these countries tolerated the publication of several small,
alternative papers, so long as they echoed the views of the Communist party.
After the Communist armies under Mao Zedong won the Chinese civil war in 1949, the Communists
imposed Soviet-style control over the press. In October 1949 all newspapers in China were required to
register with the national information ministry, which shut down most of the papers. The few
newspapers that survived this process did so with new editors appointed by the Communist Party.
Their editorial policies came under the authority of the party's department of propaganda. Xinhua, the
official news agency, provided their news. The one paper to survive the Communist victory with its
name and independence intact was the Tianjin daily Ta Kung Pao, which specialized in financial news.
Along with the party journal Renmin Ribao (People's Daily), it was one of the few publications licensed
for sale outside China.
D Newspapers in Postcolonial Governments
Even in countries not directly affected by World War II, newspapers endured challenges to their
independence. After India gained its independence from Britain in 1947, the Indian government
adopted restrictive press controls. The Objectionable Matters Press Law of 1951 forbade the
publication of defamatory content. The Indian government used its own heavy advertising budget as a
way to punish or reward particular papers for the way they portrayed government issues. The Price
and Page Law of 1957 regulated the size and price of newspapers and the proportion of allowable
advertising. While that law’s defenders advocated it as a way to help small and regional papers
compete with major dailies, the law had the effect of keeping the Indian press financially weak and
vulnerable to official pressures.
Newspapers in other developing nations also endured pressure from newly independent governments.
These regimes urged the press to play a patriotic role in nation building by assuming a less critical
view of the government. Such pressure was intense in Indonesia under the leadership of President
Sukarno, who governed from 1945 to 1968. In 1957 the Indonesian government suspended 30
newspapers and arrested a dozen editors.
In South Korea, the government forbade newspapers to criticize President Syngman Rhee at any time
during his regime, which lasted from 1948 to1960. The South Korean press faced stricter and more
repressive government controls after Rhee was ousted in 1960. Press control finally relaxed when
democratic reforms were adopted under President Kim Young Sam, who led the country from 1993 to
1998. In Pakistan, Article 8 of the nation’s constitution guaranteed freedom of the press, but the penal
code contained several clauses under which newspapers were repeatedly punished for offenses against
the government.
In South Africa the 1963 Publications Act permitted the government to censor any newspaper that did
not agree to a self-policing and self-censoring code of conduct. The Rand Daily Mail chose to publish
frequent criticisms of the Nationalist government and its policy of apartheid. As a result, the paper
faced government harassment, fines, the confiscation of its journalists’ passports, and advertising
boycotts.
E Breakdown of Communism in Eastern Europe
A dramatic expansion of press freedoms came in the 1980s in the country least expected to produce
them, the USSR. For most of the Soviet regime’s 70-year existence, the government and the
Communist Party rigidly controlled the Soviet press. At times, however, the press challenged the limits
of Communist Party power. Under the brutal dictatorship of Joseph Stalin, which lasted from the late
1920s to 1953, many journalists were executed or sent to labor camps in Siberia. In the early 1960s
Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev relaxed some controls, and the Communist Party’s daily, Pravda
(Truth), published a defense of exiled novelist Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, as well as an attack on
censorship.
During the 1980s, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev began a policy of glasnost (openness), which
included increased freedom for the press to probe Soviet history and particularly Stalin's crimes.
Glasnost allowed the Soviet press to criticize and discuss foreign policy and to publicize social
problems such as crime, alcoholism, and poverty. The Soviet press had not enjoyed such freedom
since before the Russian Revolution of 1917. The press exposed the underworld of organized crime. It
informed the public of governmental policy changes initiated under Gorbachev. Western politicians and
journalists were invited to write commentaries in Soviet papers. These and other freedoms created a
new awareness among Soviet people, setting the stage for the political reforms that ultimately
resulted in the breakdown of the USSR in 1991 and the ensuing collapse of Communist governments
in Eastern Europe.
IX THE NEWSPAPER INDUSTRY TODAY
The newspaper industry today continues the trends of consolidation and concentration of ownership
first established in the 19th century. But a late-20th-century phenomena, the Internet, promises to
revolutionize the newspaper industry worldwide.
A Consolidation
The number of newspapers in circulation continues the steady decline that began at the turn of 20th
century. Most U.S. and Canadian cities today have only one newspaper publisher. In Canada, only 6
cities are served by two or more separately owned newspapers. In more than 170 American cities, a
single publisher produces both a morning and an evening paper. Fewer than 30 U.S. cities have
competing papers with different ownership.
Many people believe that the lack of competition compromises the integrity of news coverage in those
cities. Without immediate competitive threats to keep them in check, papers may be less likely to
present alternate views of public issues or may present the views of the publisher or owner not as
opinion, but as fact. In some areas, competition for advertising with radio, television, and magazines
may encourage newspapers to present all points of view. Many newspaper publishers, however, own
radio and television stations, often in the same city where their papers are published.
B Newspaper Chains
The tendency toward newspaper chains—ownership of a number of newspapers by a single company—
which began with Hearst and Scripps in the United States in the late 1800s, has also increased
worldwide. In Canada about two-thirds of the total circulation is owned by five large corporations, four
of which operated internationally. The largest newspaper chain is Gannett Co., which owned 94
newspapers with a circulation totaling about 8 million worldwide in 2002.
C The Internet
The rapid and widespread expansion of the Internet has enabled millions of people to read a variety of
daily newspapers online, usually free of charge. This trend, along with the rise of 24-hour cable
television news networks, has caused subscription and circulation rates to decline. The percentage of
Americans getting news from the Internet grew rapidly during the late 1990s. In 2002 some two-
thirds of adult Americans were getting the news online. Roughly one fourth of all Americans get news
from the Internet on an average day.
Today almost all of the world’s major newspapers have online versions. Most medium- to large-sized
daily newspapers in the United States and Canada also publish on the Internet. These developments
have led some media experts to predict that the printed newspaper will give way to fully electronic
information services in the early decades of the 21st century. But whatever its medium—electronic or
print—the newspaper will likely remain an important feature in modern society.
Pornography
I INTRODUCTION
Pornography, films, magazines, writings, photographs, or other materials that are sexually explicit and
intended to arouse sexual excitement in their audience. Deriving from the Greek words pornē
(―prostitute‖) and graphein (―to write‖), the word pornography originally referred to any work of art or
literature dealing with sex and sexual themes. Pornography is one of the most controversial forms of
expression. Societies have long debated whether pornographic works should be subject to censorship,
and the question of how to distinguish between artistic works and pornography has perplexed
governments ever since they began to take freedom of expression seriously. In addition, the social
consequences of pornography have become the subject of intense debate.
Pornography is not the same thing as obscenity, although people often use the terms interchangeably.
Obscenity is a legal concept that applies to those forms of pornography that society considers the
most harmful to sexual morality, and that it punishes under criminal law. In the United States, for
example, the Supreme Court limits the definition of obscenity to ―hard-core‖ pornographic depictions,
meaning extremely explicit portrayals of sex. Thus, pornography is illegal only if judged to be
obscene.
Many feminist thinkers, such as Americans Gloria Steinem, Catharine MacKinnon, and Andrea
Dworkin, have proposed another definition of pornography, distinguishing it from erotica. Such
thinkers define pornography as the ―sexually explicit subordination of women‖ and view it as a form of
discrimination against women, not simply a violation of traditional moral norms. Erotica, on the other
hand, is sexually explicit material that portrays men and women in postures of equality and mutual
respect.
Although little is known about the origins of pornography, it is as old as written records. The ancient
Greeks used pornographic themes in songs in Dionysian festivals, and ancient Romans painted
pornographic pictures on walls in the ancient city of Pompeii. Pornography was also prevalent in some
ancient Eastern cultures, such as those of India, Japan, and China. In medieval Europe, authors used
bawdy ballads and verses to ridicule the church, and Il decamerone (1353; The Decameron) by Italian
writer Giovanni Boccaccio was licentious in nature. It was not until the 1800s, however, that
pornography began to become a social problem, primarily because the spread of technology—such as
printing, photography, and motor vehicles—made it more readily available and because of the growth
of democracy and individual freedom.
II PORNOGRAPHY AND CULTURE
The content of pornography is a function of many things, including culture, history, biology, and
technology. Over time, pornography has grown more and more sexually explicit as producers have
taken advantage of the freedoms that accompanied the spread of democracy. Although sexual desire
is instinctual and biological, representations of sex are shaped by cultural factors, such as the nature
of the relationship between men and women, ideals of sexuality, symbols of power and attractiveness,
the nature of moral values, the extent of individual liberty, and the availability of various forms of
technology.
Some pornography is an expression of the sexual fantasies of the mainstream social order, whereas
other types of pornography are more ―transgressive,‖ representing unconventional or dissident forms
of sexuality. In both cases, the content of pornography is a reflection (positive or negative) of the
culture from which it arises. For example, some scholars have pointed out that pornographic
portrayals in the United States have emphasized sexual competition and aggression more prominently
than do portrayals in less competitive societies. And some cultures, such as Japan, have been more
tolerant of child pornography and violence, although Japanese laws have recently attempted to restrict
such material.
Legal definitions of pornography are also a function of culture and politics. Although pornography has
grown more explicit and has become more available since the early 20th century, this trend has been
punctuated by several episodes of governmental crackdowns on pornography that were due to political
movements and reactions to unsettling social change. For example, the rise of antismut societies in
the United States, Britain, and Canada between the 1890s and 1920s was partly a response to
concerns about the breakdown of moral and social order wrought by economic expansion. The
Supreme Court of Canada’s decision in 1992 to ban degrading and dehumanizing pornography was
related to the mobilization of a feminist and conservative political alliance. A similar movement in the
United States, where the civil liberty tradition is stronger, failed to influence the courts.
III LEGAL STATUS
Since the beginning of the 20th century, court decisions have generally narrowed the range of
pornographic material that can be considered obscene or illegal. Each country has its own approach to
the law, however, and there is little international coordination despite the fact that pornographic
material can be sent instantly anywhere in the world over the Internet.
Child pornography is illegal in nearly all countries, although enforcement varies across the globe. Most
countries agree on the basic definition of child pornography: sexually explicit material made with
actual minors, usually under 16 to 18 years of age, as subjects. Some countries, including Canada and
Germany, prohibit ―virtual‖ child pornography in addition to the ―actual‖ variety. Virtual pornography
comes in two forms: depictions in which adult models are made up to look like children, and artistic or
computer simulations of children involved in sexual activity. Laws against virtual child pornography are
controversial because they can cover a broad range of material, thus raising concerns about their
impact on freedom of expression. In addition, the harm caused by virtual child pornography is less
direct and obvious than that caused by actual child pornography.
A United States
A1 Legislation
The Congress of the United States passed the first federal obscenity law as part of the Tariff Act of
1842, barring the importation of all ―indecent and obscene prints, paintings, lithographs, engravings,
and transparencies.‖ However, very little obscenity prosecution took place in the United States until
after the Civil War (1861-1865). In the late 19th century, prosecutors grew more active as the
production of pornographic material increased and new antivice and antismut groups pressured them
to bring cases. The most prominent such group was the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice,
which was the offspring of America’s leading antivice crusader, Anthony Comstock.
The so-called Comstock Law, an 1873 amendment to the 1865 Postal Act, prohibited sending any
obscene material through the domestic mails, including materials dealing with abortion or birth
control. This act made Comstock a special agent to the post office with personal authority to enforce
the law. By the time of his death in 1915, Comstock had spearheaded hundreds of successful
prosecutions in the name of moral decency, many of which involved works of considerable literary
merit. ―Comstockery,‖ as this came to be known, declined after 1920 with the advent of the modern
civil liberties movement, but as late as the 1930s classic works such as Lady Chatterley’s Lover
(1928), by English novelist D. H. Lawrence, and An American Tragedy (1925), by American novelist
Theodore Dreiser, were found obscene. It was not until the 1950s, when social mores and court
decisions grew more clearly liberal in this domain, that such works enjoyed unambiguous protection
against censorship.
Congress passed 20 obscenity laws between 1842 and 1956, most of which were variations of or
amendments to the original Comstock Law. Later, Congress passed a series of antipornography and
anti-indecency laws dealing with new forms of technology and with the protection of children. The
Protection of Children Against Sexual Exploitation Act of 1977 prohibits anyone from employing or
inducing a minor to participate in sexual conduct or in the making of pornography. In 1988 Congress
passed legislation against ―dial-a-porn‖ companies that made it illegal to make indecent or obscene
phone calls over state lines for commercial purposes. (In 1989 the Supreme Court struck down the
part of the law that dealt with indecency.) The Child Pornography Prevention Act of 1996 made it
illegal to distribute or receive child pornography, including virtual child pornography, by any means.
(However, in 2002 the Supreme Court struck down provisions of the law that banned virtual child
pornography.) Penalties for violation of these various laws range from a few years to 30 years in
prison, depending on the circumstances.
The widespread availability of pornography on the Internet has led to a number of legislative attempts
to prevent children’s access to it. However, opponents have challenged these laws on the grounds that
they are overly broad and infringe on freedom of speech, which is protected by the First Amendment
of the U.S. Constitution. In 1996 Congress passed the Communications Decency Act (CDA), making it
a crime to send any obscene or indecent messages over the Internet knowing that the recipient is
under 18 years of age. After the Supreme Court unanimously ruled this law unconstitutional in 1997,
Congress passed the Child Online Protection Act (known as ―son of CDA‖), which required commercial
Web sites to ensure that children could not access material deemed ―harmful to minors.‖ The act also
prohibited, among other things, material that ―depicts, describes, or represents, in a manner patently
offensive with respect to minors, an actual or simulated sexual act or sexual contact.‖ In 1999 a
federal appeals court blocked that law as well, citing free-speech concerns. The Children’s Internet
Protection Act, passed in 2000, required all public schools and libraries that receive federal technology
funds to install filtering software designed to block access to pornographic sites. A coalition of civil
liberties groups, led by the American Civil Liberties Union and the American Library Association,
argued that filtering software was imprecise and blocked access to Web sites that have nothing to do
with pornography. In 2002 a federal judicial panel struck down the Children’s Internet Protection Act,
finding that filtering software blocked Web sites whose content was constitutionally protected.
However, in 2003 the Supreme Court reversed the lower court and ruled that the law was
constitutional and was justified by the government’s legitimate interest in protecting children from
harmful materials. The Court noted that the law allowed librarians to enable access to blocked Web
sites at the request of patrons, thereby protecting patrons’ First Amendment rights.
A2 The Two Commissions
Two national commissions appointed to study the effects of pornography in the United States show
how tolerance of such material ebbs and flows. In 1970 the Commission on Obscenity and
Pornography, created by President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1968, found no evidence that pornography
caused crime or delinquency among adults and youths. Although the commission supported laws
prohibiting sales of pornographic materials to children, it recommended eliminating all legal
restrictions on the use by consenting adults of sexually explicit books, magazines, pictures, and films.
This position was consistent with the dominant liberal view of the time and with much of the social
science and psychological literature that was then available. Although the commission’s findings were
widely reported, politicians rejected them.
In 1985 Attorney General Edwin Meese III formed another national commission to study the effects of
pornography. By this time, society had changed in several ways. Pornography had become even more
available; a new generation of social science studies suggested a link between exposure to violent or
degrading pornography and male aggression against women in laboratory settings; and new
conservative and feminist movements were joining hands to attack pornography. In addition, the
membership of the new commission was decidedly more conservative than that of the 1970
commission. Not surprisingly, the Attorney General’s Commission on Pornography, also known as the
Meese Commission, reached strikingly different conclusions than did its predecessor. In its 1986
report, the commission concluded that violent pornography and degrading pornography (pornography
showing the ―degradation, domination, or humiliation‖ of women) cause violence and discrimination
against women and an erosion of sexual morality. The Meese Commission’s report suffered the same
fate as that of the 1970 commission, being largely ignored.
A3 Major Court Decisions
In 1896 the United States Supreme Court, in the cases Rosen v. United States and Swearingen v.
United States, ruled that the definition of obscenity should be the same as the one stated in a famous
1868 English case, Regina v. Hicklin. That case defined obscenity as material that has a tendency ―to
deprave or corrupt those whose minds are open to such immoral influences and into whose hands a
publication of this sort may fall.‖ Judges could rule a work obscene if even isolated passages fit this
definition. This broad test changed in the early 1930s as courts grew more concerned about protecting
serious literary treatments of sexual themes. A major turning point took place when federal courts
overturned the government’s ban on Ulysses (1922), a book by Irish writer James Joyce that many
scholars now consider the most important novel of the 20th century. In the 1933 case United States v.
One Book Called “Ulysses,” federal judge John Woolsey declared Ulysses nonobscene and rejected the
Hicklin ―bad tendency‖ test in favor of a test that focused on the author’s pornographic intent and the
effect on the average reader of the work taken as whole.
In the 1957 case Roth v. United States, which involved a Comstock Law prosecution, the Supreme
Court ruled that obscene materials are not protected by the First Amendment’s guarantees of freedom
of speech and of the press. In its decision, the Court also established a new test for obscenity:
―whether to the average person, applying contemporary community standards, the dominant theme of
the material taken as a whole appeals to the prurient interest.‖ (Prurient means marked by impure or
unwholesome sexual desire.) This obscenity standard was the first designed to protect the First
Amendment rights of materials dealing with sex in a manner not appealing to a prurient interest.
Before this time, courts based their interpretations of obscenity on their reading of the relevant
statutes without reference to the First Amendment.
During the 1960s the Supreme Court developed more liberal tests for obscenity, and the market in
pornography exploded in the wake of the sexual liberation movement. In the 1973 case Miller v.
California, a somewhat more conservative Court settled on a three-part test that is now the foundation
of obscenity doctrine in the United States: (1) whether the work, taken as a whole, would be prurient
according to the average person applying contemporary community standards; (2) whether the work
describes sex acts in a patently offensive way; and (3) whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks
serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value. Essentially, this test restricts obscene material to
―hard-core‖ pornography that shows sex acts or displays of genitals in a patently offensive way.
Although the Miller definition seems to balance libertarian and conservative moral values, it has
proved difficult to apply in practice and has not had much impact on the growth and availability of
hard-core pornography.
In the 1985 case American Booksellers Association v. Hudnut, a federal appeals court struck down an
Indianapolis antipornography ordinance that employed the feminist definition of pornography as the
―sexually explicit subordination of women.‖ The court ruled that the ordinance violated the First
Amendment because it was inconsistent with obscenity doctrine and constituted punishment of speech
with a particular viewpoint. Experts pointed to the case as evidence that U.S. courts, in determining
obscenity, still focus on prurience and have refused to make violence or degradation elements of
obscenity law.
In the 2002 case Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition, the Supreme Court ruled that two parts of the
Child Pornography Prevention Act of 1996 violated the First Amendment. The act went beyond
previous laws by prohibiting ―any visual depiction‖ that ―is, or appears to be, of a minor engaging in
sexually explicit conduct.‖ The Court held that the act’s ban on virtual child pornography, such as
computer-generated sexually explicit images of minors, was unconstitutional because pornography
could be banned only if it used real children or met the legal test for obscenity. It also invalidated a
ban on presenting youthful-looking adults as children in pornographic materials. The Court noted that
the act was so broadly worded that it prohibited not only child pornography but also forms of
expression with serious literary, artistic, or political value.
The Court’s decision in United States v. American Library Association in 2003 upheld the Children’s
Internet Protection Act, the third attempt by Congress to restrict pornography on the Internet. The act
required schools and libraries to install filtering software on public Internet terminals as a condition for
receiving federal technology funds. Concerns about the software blocking nonpornographic Web sites
were misplaced, the Court ruled, because the law allows libraries to restore access to blocked Web
sites upon the request of a patron for ―bona fide research or other lawful purposes.‖ The burden
placed on these library patrons, the Court said, was ―comparatively small‖ given the legitimate
interest of the government in shielding children from inappropriate sexual material.
B Canada
For most of the 20th century, Canadian obscenity law resembled United States law. The Postal Service
Act (1875) and the Customs Act (1879) prohibited the transmission and importation of obscenity
through the mails, and in an 1892 addition to the criminal code, Parliament provided criminal
punishment for the public sale or exposure of any obscene book. Courts interpreted obscenity and
indecency along the lines of the 1868 Hicklin case, which criminalized materials tending to ―deprave or
corrupt.‖ As in the United States, an antivice movement influenced prosecutions between 1892 and
1920, and a period of liberalization followed between 1920 and 1950.
In the 1950s concern over the rise of pornographic magazines led Canadian authorities to strengthen
obscenity laws. Because the Constitution of Canada did not formally protect freedom of expression
until 1982, courts did not limit such movements in the name of constitutional principles, as they began
to do in the United States. A 1959 law defined material as obscene if the ―dominant characteristic‖ of
the material ―is the undue exploitation of sex, or of sex and any one or more of the following subjects,
namely, crime, horror, cruelty and violence.‖ This definition is much more expansive than obscenity
doctrine in the United States, which does not include crime, violence, horror, or cruelty.
In the 1960s libertarian movements arose in Canada, as they did in the United States, but Canadian
movements were less powerful than those in the United States, and the courts were less
accommodating of them. Then, in the 1980s, coalitions of conservatives and feminists began
pressuring lawmakers to strengthen obscenity law by outlawing violent and degrading pornography.
The 1985 report of the Special Committee on Pornography and Prostitution, also called the Fraser
Commission, advocated criminalizing such material, but Parliament did not follow suit. However,
courts began incorporating the feminist approach on their own in the mid-1980s.
In the 1985 case R. v. Towne Cinema, the Supreme Court of Canada adopted the view that
pornography degrades and dehumanizes women, but it was not until R. v. Butler in 1992 that the
Court defined material as obscene if it contains sexual violence, is degrading or dehumanizing, or
involves sexual portrayals of children. Canada’s child pornography laws are similar to those in the
United States, except that Canada also prohibits virtual child pornography.
Canada has protected pornography and obscenity much less than the United States has.
Consequently, pornography is less extensively available in Canada than it is in the United States.
However, the restrictions on pornography in Canada have not gone unchallenged. Some scholars have
charged that the Butler decision has sanctioned prosecutions of bookstores dealing with gay and
lesbian themes, as well as other crackdowns.
C Other Countries
Legal approaches to pornography and obscenity vary around the world. Britain, for example,
designates something as obscene based on its content and on the way it is distributed. Material is
obscene if it is likely to corrupt a typical viewer, based on the medium. Thus, something that is not
obscene in print might be obscene over the Internet because of the ease with which the Internet can
be accessed. Germany, however, makes no distinction between the Internet and other forums. The
German constitution imposes a duty on the German legislature to protect youths’ and individuals’
personal honor against the dangers associated with certain forms of speech, so German laws restrict
violent materials as well as obscene materials. Denmark, on the other hand, repealed its obscenity
laws in 1969.
Approaches to pornography in non-Western societies vary according to societal norms. In
authoritarian regimes such as China and Singapore, materials are very restricted. The Chinese
Communist government maintains tight control over expression and normally does not allow
distribution of sexually explicit material, especially if the government believes the material is
detrimental to the Chinese Communist Party’s notion of a good citizen. Until recently, Japanese law
tolerated child pornography; the International Criminal Police Organization (Interpol) estimated in
1998 that up to 80 percent of Internet sites with child pornography originated in Japan. Prior to 1999,
the only Japanese statute prohibiting actual child pornography was very limited in its reach, applying
only to children under 13 who filed complaints within six months of an incident. A general criminal
obscenity law protected minors over 13, but it also specified that the material must depict sexual
organs to be considered illegal. Consequently, pornographic materials in Japan often resorted to
showing other sexually oriented depictions of children, including abuse or torture, to avoid running
afoul of the law. In 1999, partly in reaction to international pressure, Japan’s parliament passed a new
law banning the distribution, sale, or public display of child pornography on the Internet or in other
forums, as well as the production or possession of child pornography for the purpose of these
activities. Penalties for the violation of the law range up to three years in prison and a substantial fine.
However, critics complained that it did not criminalize possession of child pornography for private use.
IV PREVALENCE AND AVAILABILITY
Both the availability of pornography and the growth of the pornography industry have exploded since
the 1950s. These trends reflect an increased demand for pornography, greater social and legal
tolerance, and the emergence of new technologies for distribution.
In the United States, the pornography industry went ―above ground‖ in the 1950s with the creation of
Playboy, which was the first mass-marketed ―girlie magazine‖ (see Playboy Enterprises). By the 1970s
many other magazines were available that had much more explicit and hard-core content. Hard-core
pornographic movie theaters emerged for the first time in the late 1960s and early 1970s. By the mid-
1980s, however, pornographic magazines and movie houses were beginning to decline as new
technologies emerged that made private viewing possible, especially videocassette recorders (VCRs)
and cable television. Since the 1990s the Internet has increased the availability of pornography in the
United States and many other countries.
Pornography in the United States is now a multibillion-dollar business. In 1996 Americans spent more
than $8 billion on hard-core pornographic materials, such as videos, adult cable programs, computer
pornography, sex magazines, and peep shows. About 25,000 stores sold hard-core videos. In 1992
Americans rented 490 million hard-core pornographic videos, a substantial increase from the 75
million rented in 1985. A 1997 study of pornography on the Internet found approximately 34,000
pornographic Web sites. Some studies have maintained that organized crime is deeply involved in the
making of hard-core pornography in the United States, Japan, and elsewhere.
Various efforts have been made to control the spread of pornography on television, in movie theaters,
and on the Internet. Many countries, such as the United States and Britain, permit restrictions on the
content of certain forms of broadcasting beyond those allowed for newspapers, books, and other
mediums of expression. (Cable television, however, is exempt from such regulation in the United
States.) In addition, broadcasters often engage in self-regulation. Governments have also moved to
restrict movie theaters and sex shows by enforcing basic obscenity laws, enacting zoning laws that
limit the number of such establishments, and, when relevant, enforcing hygiene laws.
The Internet has posed special problems in two respects: It is easily accessible by minors and it
makes it easy to transfer materials over national boundaries with the mere click of the computer
mouse. The Communications Decency Act of 1996 in the United States restricted sending sexually
indecent statements or images to minors, but the Supreme Court ruled the act unconstitutional for
being too broad and vague and thereby abridging the freedom of speech protected by the First
Amendment. Congress subsequently passed new legislation to address this problem. Other countries
have passed similar laws. To protect international boundaries, Germany has passed laws that hold
local Internet access providers liable for the content of material that enters Germany from servers
outside the country, a policy that has been challenged as a threat to the free market created by the
Internet. Child pornography on the Internet poses a serious problem. In Japan, for example, where
laws against child pornography were fairly weak until recently, a police study in 1997 found that of
3,000 pornographic Japanese Web sites, 40 percent showed images of children. In response to this
problem, Japan passed a law in 1999 that outlawed child pornography on the Internet. France has
punished Internet access providers that have allowed child pornography to enter France through their
systems. Efforts at international policing have yet to make much headway because obscenity and child
pornography standards are national, not international.
In the United States and elsewhere, libraries have encountered complaints and regulations, mostly at
the state level, designed to limit the access minors have to pornography on library computers.
Libraries have defended themselves on First Amendment grounds, and for the most part they have
prevailed in court. They have also purchased filtering software designed to restrict minors’ access to
certain kinds of sites. Such self-regulation holds promise, although critics of filtering software note
that it also blocks many nonpornographic Web sites. For more information on legislation limiting the
availability of pornography, see the Legal Status section of this article.
V ATTITUDES TOWARD PORNOGRAPHY
Attitudes toward pornography generally can be classified into one of four major perspectives:
conservative, feminist, postmodern, and liberal. Tensions among these viewpoints have only increased
with the quantum leap in availability of pornography on the Internet.
A Conservative Perspective
The conservative view is based on the traditional foundation of obscenity law, which focuses on how
pornography corrupts moral virtue and social order. It takes the position that sexual desire should be
restrained by rationality, interpersonal commitment, and responsibility, qualities that are preserved by
marriage and commitment to the family. Pornography is a social ill because it encourages impersonal
desire and recreational sex, thereby coarsening the relationship between men and women and
undermining marriage. In this view, pornography also contributes to sexual violence. The conservative
view may be based on religion or on secular moral theory. In the United States, several major
religious activists have worked in the antipornography movement, but evangelicals of the New Right
have been the most influential, especially since the 1970s.
B Feminist Perspective
The mainstream feminist perspective rejects the moral and religious views of the conservative
approach, focusing instead on how pornography contributes to the inequality and subordination of
women in society. In this view, pornography is not about sex but about power; pornography reflects
and reinforces male power and sexuality by depicting women as sex objects who exist to fulfill the
pleasure of men. Some feminists distinguish pornography from erotica, which is defined as portraying
women as equal to men. Not all feminists favor restrictions on pornography, however. Feminists who
are against censorship believe that antipornography feminism interprets pornography too narrowly
and that it has a repressive potential that allies it with conservatism. Anticensorship feminists, such as
American lawyer Nadine Strossen (elected president of the American Civil Liberties Union in 1991),
maintain that all forms of censorship endanger women’s equality. In their view, women and minority
groups have historically relied upon free speech to promote their claims, so they have joined hands
with liberals and civil libertarians in opposing procensorship feminism.
C Postmodern Perspective
Postmodern critics of censorship, such as Canadian scholars Brenda Cossman and Shannon Bell,
accuse both conservatives and procensorship feminists of adopting too simplistic a view of sex,
equality, and government controls. Postmodernism is skeptical of all-encompassing explanations of
complex social phenomena, so its advocates tend to eschew strong positions on either side of the
censorship debate. According to the postmodernist perspective, pornography has many meanings and
effects, so it is irresponsible to reduce it to one dominant meaning. Postmodernists also identify with
marginalized groups, and they argue that the alliance between feminists and conservatives in Canada
has led to repression of gay and lesbian bookstores in the aftermath of the Supreme Court of Canada’s
profeminist decision in the 1992 case R. v. Butler. (For more information on the Butler case, see
Canada subsection in the Legal Status section of this article.)
D Liberal Perspective
The liberal and civil libertarian approach tolerates any consensual or voluntary form of adult sexual
activity, as long as it does not directly harm others. In this view, making or viewing pornography is a
legitimate expression of individual preference. Like postmodernists, liberals tend to interpret
pornography relativistically, holding that its meaning and effects often lie in the eye of the beholder.
But whereas postmodernists would allow a limited role for state regulation, liberals reject state
restrictions on individual choice. Liberal commentators tend to be critical of claims concerning the
harmful effects of pornography, whether moral or scientific, whereas postmodernists hold that
pornography has harmful as well as beneficial effects.
VI EFFECTS OF PORNOGRAPHY
The question of how pornography affects human behaviors and attitudes has been a considerable
source of controversy and public concern. Opponents of pornography believe it encourages
immorality, sexual violence, and negative attitudes toward women, while defenders see pornography
for adults as a harmless diversion that may serve to relieve sexual tensions.
Because violent pornography is generally considered more harmful than nonviolent material, the
prevalence of violent pornography has become a central issue in considering the overall effects of
pornography. However, the findings are inconclusive and sometimes contradictory. Some investigators
claim that up to 10 percent of all pornography depicts sexual violence, whereas others maintain that
the proportion is as low as 1 percent.
The 1986 U.S. Attorney General’s Commission on Pornography concluded that violent pornography
―bears a causal relationship to antisocial acts of sexual violence‖ and that degrading pornography
―bears some causal relationship‖ to violence, sexual aggression, and negative attitudes, such as the
myth that women enjoy being raped. Research conducted on subjects (usually male college students)
in carefully controlled laboratory settings has provided some support for this assessment of violent
pornography, but less support for the commission’s conclusions about nonviolent degrading
pornography. To isolate the influence of different factors, experimenters typically expose groups of
men to one of four types of films: violent and sexually explicit, violent but not sexually explicit,
sexually explicit but not violent, and neither sexually explicit nor violent. After exposure to the films,
experimenters often measure subjects’ aggression by testing their willingness to administer simulated
shocks to a female colleague of the researchers.
Studies indicate that men who viewed films that were both violent and sexually explicit recorded the
highest levels of aggression, followed by those who viewed sexually explicit but nonviolent films. Men
record the highest levels of aggression after viewing pornography that portrays women as being
sexually aroused by the violence perpetrated against them. According to American researchers Edward
Donnerstein, Daniel Lenz, and Steven Penrod, ―It is this unique feature of violent pornography—the
presentation of the idea that women find sexual violence arousing—that plays an important role in
producing violent pornography’s effects.‖ However, studies have found little correlation between
purely erotic nonviolent films and violence or aggression against women.
Although research provides some support for the view that violent pornography is harmful, critics
advise caution about these findings for several reasons. First, the evidence shows only correlation
between two factors and does not prove that one causes the other. Second, laboratory experiments
are done in artificial settings and do not necessarily reflect behavior in the real world. Subjects who
behave aggressively in the laboratory do not expect negative consequences as they might in the real
world, and subjects might perceive that experimenters condone or even encourage aggression. Also,
subjects might not believe that they are inflicting real harm. Third, some studies have demonstrated
that the effects of violent pornography usually wear off once subjects leave the lab, suggesting a
transient effect. Finally, no studies have measured the long-term effects of exposure to pornography.
These long-term studies are necessary before researchers can adequately assess the effects of
pornography.
In summary, some evidence exists that exposure to violent pornography, and perhaps also to
degrading pornography, causes violence and aggression against women. However, the evidence is
inconclusive, and other studies have found no such effects.
Contributed By:
Donald A. Downs