Adam Levine | The Insider
Back in the 1850s, Abraham Lincoln was beginning his presidential campaign. At the time, biased newspapers were extremely common. A reporter from The New York Herald once wrote that Lincoln’s Cooper Union speech was “unmitigated trash, interlarded with coarse and clumsy jokes.”
On November 4, 2009, Journalism teacher Mrs. Nancy Kaplan took ten staff members to view the Lincoln Exhibit at the New York Historical Society in Manhattan to learn how the press influenced society, and consider whether the media still has an influence today.
Northern newspapers, such as The New York Tribune favored Lincoln while southern newspapers like The Ch
arleston Mercury were totally against him. “ It depended on which part of the country you were from as to how Lincoln was viewed in the press. Obviously, the abolitionist newspapers and the pro-Union papers were favorable to him,” said history teacher Ms. Karolynn Mangiero.
Biased newspapers and headlines were used during the 1800s as an attempt to sway people to one political side.
Today biased front pages and headlines are not only rare, but also unethical. Social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter have become more popular than newspapers, thus making them the biased newspapers of our generation.
“Oddly enough, people aren’t really all that shocked for the most part. A lot of people who come through the exhibit express the feeling that a lot of bias still exists in the media today. It’s just more subtle now,” said docent Jennifer Lagasse.
During Lincoln’s time, newspapers were seen as a source for news and a way to share information about local happenings with people. Nowadays, some newspapers have become geared towards whose dating whom and the latest celebrity’s public misconduct.
“Today I believe newspapers are about sensationalization and manipulating individuals so they can make large sums of money. For example, the headlines in New York’s daily newspapers have been filled with Tiger Woods’ domestic issues rather than the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan or any of the major social and economic issues facing the nation,” said Ms. Mangiero. “This also says a lot about us as news readers. We are more concerned with gossip than real issues.”
