Civil War

Civil War and The Press

Lincoln is known as one of the greatest U.S Presidents (Williams, 2004) but there is one thing that can make many people question that statement.

Throughout the Civil War, there was controversy on what the press was able to write about, they were limited. There was a period where parts of the constitution were restricted, this included freedom of speech and freedom of the press.

"abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."(First Amendment)

Lincoln's reasoning for limiting what journalists wrote about was in a sense a great thing because it freed slaves and he was able to carry out his agenda. On the other hand, this was indeed very unconstitutional because he limited the first amendment for his own advantage. He stood up to anyone that had a different view from what his personal agenda was.

Union generals were told to prevent any battle plans ending up in the newspapers and to keep Confederate sympathizers from discouraging enlistments or releasing military information (The First Amendment Encyclopedia). In return many people tried to rise up against Lincoln, and news reporters were arrested because of opposing believes or discouraging men from enlisting.

In the end Lincoln did free slaves like he said he would but started a trend of not letting The Press write what they believe or what is happening in the country.

The North and South had different views on the war so the newspapers for each side were different. Both were very passionate on those views but there were still people on both sides that were pro-war and some anti-war (McCurry)

The North was more modernized because they used illustrations and better technology. They were majority, antiwar and were against slavery and were in favor of the democratic party.

The South was the opposite, they were prowar and wanted to keep slavery.

This was what made the newspapers different because they were on opposite ends when it came to views, what they did have in common were the issues with Lincoln’s administration. Since Lincoln had restricted the first amendment, they had to be careful with what was being written or they could have been prosecuted, which many of them were.

The Civil War was a good and bad time for journalism. It was good because there was more media coverage and new technology coming into the picture. The bad was more of who much they could write and tip-toeing around the government.

Comments

Journo Hero

Ellen Browning Scripps Why is she a hero? Ellen Browning Scripps was born on October 18, 1836 in London. Throughout her life she experienced a great deal of hardship at a young age. Her mother passed away when she was just 4 years old. After this tragedy, her, her father and the rest of her siblings moved from England to the United states. This was in 1844. She was born one of 13 kids and was the only one that continued her education to a higher level. Although she was the only one to receive a higher education, she later helped her siblings to better their careers with what she accomplished. For example, for many years her career was teaching, but later on one of her brothers started a newspaper called “ The Detroit Evening News” in 1873 and Scripps decided to invest into the newspaper. She later invested in her other brother’s newspaper “The Cleveland Press.” In addition to her investments, she also contributed columns as well. Journalist Side Aside from investin...

Final Blog Post

For the final blog post, we were assigned to watch Good Night, and Good Luck", this film dates back to the age of the 1950's. It depicts the relationship between the press and the government, this was during the time when Joseph McCarthy was a senator. Edward R. Murrow was the journalist televising McCarthy's accusations of communism. Transhistoral The term Transhistoric means the " quality of holding throughout human history, not merely within the frame of reference of a particular form of society at a particular stage of historical development" . A simpler version of this definition for me would be something that stays throughout time, something that you see repeatedly over and over again in different periods and eras of history. A very known transhistoic moment would be between the press and government. This is a recurring conflict that never gets resolved. During the Civil Rights era, the president's administration wanted to confine what jour...

5 Things I Learned: Freshmen Year

My first year at HPU 1. GPA's in High School and College are completely different I remember coming into college and thinking that if I had a 4.2-3.8 through all of High School why would college be different. Now that I've been at HPU for two semesters, I can say that even maintaining a 2.0 which is what you need to be academically eligible is hard. When I was told that to keep my scholarship, I needed to have a 2.75 cumulative gap, inside my head, the thought that was running through was "who wouldn't be able to have a 2.75 that's a piece of cake." Halfway through first semester is when it hit me that It was harder than I thought. After completing my first semester and being placed on academic probation, I just thought about my scholarship and how I needed to do my best the following semester to keep it. It definitely humbled me and made me realize that GPA's aren't the same....

Blog of Lis

Search This Blog