The digital revolution: history and journalism
Jacob Sacks-Jones
History and journalism share something fundamental: they are both a form of communicating the past to the present. While journalism focuses on the immediate past, history covers a broader past - the ‘foreign country’ where ‘they do things differently’, described by L P Hartley. 30 Journalism is future history blinkered and not afforded the luxury of perspective. However, history and journalism are two forces which not only report the world around them - the way it is, the way it was - but shape that world. In turn, that world has affected and radically altered the essence of history and journalism, from the birth of the written word right up to the present day. The 20th century saw the beginnings of perhaps one of the most significant of these changes. It is a phenomenon that would irreversibly alter the two disciplines and that has accelerated in the 21 st century: the digital revolution. To understand the modern world and its future - the future of journalism and history - we must understand this new Digital Age. Traditionally, journalism has always been vulnerable to becoming a political tool, but this old journalism is now being turned on its head in a new age. A thirst to know what is going on in the world is nothing new: the Bayeux Tapestry could be described as early journalism. 31 And it is evident, even from this very early piece of journalism, that here was a powerful tool for propaganda. Goebbels and the Nazis harnessed journalism to help control and 30 This popular quotation is taken from the opening line of one of his best known novels, The Go- Between (1953) 31 Even at the very dawning of humanity, cave paintings could be seen as a very early kind of reportage.
strengthen the Third Reich. Exaggerated journalism, or plain lies, could be used to increase loyalty to the state and hatred of perceived enemies. In much the same way the USSR used propaganda through a state-controlled press to its advantage. Controlling ‘the hearts and minds’ of the masses by controlling their consumption of current affairs is an ancient tool of the politician - for how we perceive what is going on in the world around us affects our loyalties. However, it is not solely the tool of the politician: as we have seen recently in the UK through the Leveson Inquiry into press standards, journalists themselves have great power. Elections can be won and lost through the allegiance of influential newspapers. 32 In the United States, televised debates between presidential candidates have been a long-standing feature of elections since the 1960s. At the first of these debates it is often considered that Nixon lost to Kennedy because he looked sweaty and uncomfortable on camera. Indeed, in the UK, the power of broadcast media is considered so great that it is regulated by strict laws. 33 Whoever is wielding the power, whether it be Goebbels or Murdoch, politicians or media barons, journalism can have huge influence over 32 Tony Blair managed to gain the support of The Sun during his hugely successful campaign at the 1997 general election. However, Gordon Brown lost the paper’s support in 2010 and lost the election. Indeed, recent revelations at the Leveson Inquiry into press standards highlights the power of the media: Murdoch suggested that Gordon Brown said News International had ‘declared war’ upon him and his party. 33 In the US, however, the broadcast media is not subject to regulations and is free to get away with huge bias. Fox News recently came out in support of police who pepper-sprayed peaceful protesters by claiming that pepper spray was a ‘food product’.
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