Abstract
This chapter situates Seldes’ ideology of the press within his family’s migrant and activist circumstances and the broader muckraking journalism tradition, which dominated the early years of the twentieth century. The muckraking movement was coming to an end just as Seldes became a reporter, but it had a potent appeal to the idealist. It was a style of journalism that was to shape Seldes’ expectations of the press for the rest of his professional life, and drove his investigative journalism and staunch advocacy for a socially responsible press. Indeed, it was because muckraking had established the press as a public watchdog that Seldes felt acutely compromised by his early experiences in daily journalism, and later as a war correspondent he saw first-hand the way in which governments used the press to disseminate propaganda to manipulate public opinion and shape the fate of nations.
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Notes
- 1.
Muckrakers were united in a belief that political parties had become the servants of special business and political interests and that exposé writing would help achieve a more accountable government and healthier democracy. Chalmers, David. 1959. The muckrakers and the growth of corporate power: a study in constructive journalism. American Journal of Economics and Sociology 18 (3); 297.
- 2.
Muckraking journalism has changed over time and has enjoyed different levels of prestige as it is associated with different types of “investigative, sensationalistic, yellow and advocacy journalism.” Fordham, Helen. 2016. Subversive voices: George Seldes and mid-twentieth-century muckraking. American Journalism 33 (4); 424–441.
- 3.
Between 1890 and 1919 almost 25 million immigrants made the United States their home and many of these new citizens were from southern Europe and other non-English-speaking countries.
- 4.
Journalists believed that most of the nation’s social problems flowed from “the ability of business to exploit the public with impunity” (126). Roosevelt didn’t agree with this assessment and complained in a letter to McClure that Lincoln Steffens’ and Baker’s stories “were often one-sided, unfair and did not represent the truth” (124). Seymour, T. (n.d.). A progressive partnership: Theodore Roosevelt and the Reform Press—Riss, Steffens, Baker and White (Muckrakers) ProQuest Dissertations Publishing. http://search.proquest.com/docview/303380021/
- 5.
Miraldi, Robert. 1990. Muckraking and Objectivity: Journalism’s Colliding Traditions. New York: Greenwood Press; 6.
- 6.
Seymour in his analysis notes that the muckraking movement was dominated by the middle classes and immigrant working classes. Seymour, Thaddeus. 1985. A Progressive Partnership: Theodore Roosevelt and the Reform Press—Riss, Stephens, Baker and White (Muckrakers) ProQuest Dissertations Publishing.
- 7.
According to Seldes, during this time his father corresponded with Peter Kropotkin and debated the merits of mutual aid.
- 8.
Seldes’ father had told him that he could arrange his first two names in whichever order he liked and much later journalist Floyd Gibbons would advise Seldes to drop the Henry and just go with George.
- 9.
In his book Progress and Poverty (1879) George argued that wealth in a free market economy becomes concentrated in the hands of a few and it is this “unearned wealth” that causes poverty. Coodley, L. 2013. Singing Jailbird (1916–1927). In Upton Sinclair California Socialist, Celebrity Intellectual. London: University of Nebraska Press; 69–100.
- 10.
Rick Goldsmith said that although Seldes never identified as Jewish his values were Jewish “and everything he did was informed by Jewish concerns” (Fox 2010; 27). Fox, Michael. Jewish values, ’60s drive ‘Pentagon Papers’ Washington Jewish Week; Gaithersburg [Gaithersburg] Feb 11, 2010: 27. https://search.proquest.com/docview/220904835?accountid=14681
- 11.
Initially formed in the early 1890s the group cultivated support for the 1905 Russian Revolution. Lasch, Christopher. 1972. The American Liberals and the Russian Revolution. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company; 8.
- 12.
Lasch, 1972; vii.
- 13.
Irwin, Will. July 22, 1911. The American Newspaper: a study of journalism in its relation to the public. Collier’s 47 (18); 26.
- 14.
Seldes, George. 1929. You Can’t Print That. New York: Payson & Clarke; 11.
- 15.
Seldes, George. 1953. Tell the Truth and Run. New York: Greenberg Publisher; 15.
- 16.
Hudson, R. 1970. Will Irwin’s Pioneering Criticism of the Press. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 47(2); 263–271.
- 17.
Hudson, 1970; 266.
- 18.
Dubbs, C. 2017, American Journalists in the Great War: Rewriting the Rules of Reporting. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press; 19.
- 19.
Randall, David. 2005. The Great Reporters. London: Pluto Press wrote that this figure was 18. (169) and Crozier Emmet, (1959; 128) said the number was 12.
- 20.
This was a publication launched in 1917 for the Paris-based American army and after the war, on February 18, 1919, it became the Paris Edition of the Tribune.
- 21.
This figure varies. Seldes reports 21 but the original cable from Pershing to Washington provided for 25. Crozier, 1959; 224.
- 22.
Seldes, George. 1987. Witness to a Century. New York: Ballantine Books; 69.
- 23.
Tell the Truth and Run 1953; 41.
- 24.
Armitage, A. and Hicks, G. (n.d.). The Hutchins Commission, the Office of Censorship and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch: Social responsibility during World War II. ProQuest Dissertations Publishing. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/250800919/: p. 9.
- 25.
Armitage, A., & Hicks, G. (n.d.). The Hutchins Commission, the Office of Censorship and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch: Social responsibility during World War II. ProQuest Dissertations Publishing. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/250800919/
- 26.
Seldes’ account is substantiated by M.L. Stein Under Fire–The Story of an American War Correspondent. New York: Julian Messner, 1968; 73.
- 27.
Seldes, together with Herbert Corey (AP), Lincoln Eyre (New York World), Cal Lyon (Newspaper Enterprise Association) and Fred A. Smith (Chicago Tribune) all travelled into Germany to obtain interviews and document defeated Germany. The American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) were outraged and not only sent out troops to retrieve the correspondents but also notified cable offices not to transmit their stories. The correspondents faced imprisonment and had their stories censored or delayed. Two other journalists also went into Germany, Lowell Thomas and Webb Waldron from Colliers.
- 28.
Some have said Frankfurt (Teel); 82.
- 29.
According to Teel, Seldes asked this question of Hindenburg because the Americans had received so little credit for the war. Teel, Leonard Ray. 2006. The Public Press 1900–1945: The History of American Journalism. Westport Connecticut: Praeger.
- 30.
Seldes, 1987. Witness to a Century; 100.
- 31.
Letter from Pershing to Seldes, March 18, 1919. Pershing thanked Seldes for his service saying that perhaps “in no war has an army been supported by a better informed or more intelligent public opinion.” Seldes Collection.
Bibliography
Crozier, Emmet. 1959. American Reporters on the Western Front 1914–1918. Oxford University Press. New York.
Filler, Louis. 1968. The Story of the Muckrakers. University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press.
Fox, Michael. Jewish values, ’60s drive ‘Pentagon Papers’ Washington Jewish Week; Gaithersburg [Gaithersburg] 11 Feb 2010: 27. https://search.proquest.com/docview/220904835?accountid=14681
Hudson, R. 1970. Will Irwin’s Pioneering Criticism of the Press. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 47(2), 263–271. https://doi.org/10.1177/107769907004700206
Lasch, Christopher. 1972. The American Liberals and the Russian Revolution. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company.
Seldes, George. 1953. Tell the Truth and Run. New York: Greenberg Publisher.
Seldes, George. 1987. Witness to a Century. New York: Ballantine Books.
Seldes, George. 1935. Freedom of the Press. Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company.
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Fordham, H. (2019). Muckraker. In: George Seldes’ War for the Public Good. Palgrave Studies in the History of the Media. Palgrave Pivot, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-30877-3_2
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