“In 1900 when my grandfather, Frank Noyes, helped found the modern Associated Press and embarked on 38 years of service as first president of that news agency, he and his associates were pretty sure they knew the answer to the question, how to tell the truth. Their answer was a thing called “objectivity”. It was a very good answer, too.....
The Associated Press realized at the start that it couldn’t possibly cater to the opinion whims of all the different publishers receiving its service. It set out to correct the situation by instituting the principle and practice of "objective" news coverage. Gradually, as time went by, this “revolutionary principle” became accepted as the Number 1 item in the creed of the responsible press all over the country. It wholly changed the face of the newspaper world, and it set the pattern for a full half-century of journalistic growth and progress." (Newbold Noyes, Jr.) (Interpretative Reporting, 3rd Edition Macmillian Co, 1957)
Today...this would still be called a “Revolutionary Principle”. Certainly this is not one of the current principles practiced by many in the main stream media today.
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