Scandal and Civility: Journalism and the Birth of American Democracy [Hardcover]

Marcus Daniel (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 23, 2009

A new breed of journalists came to the fore in post-revolutionary America--fiercely partisan, highly ideological, and possessed of a bold sense of vocation and purpose as they entered the fray of political debate. Often condemned by latter-day historians and widely seen in their own time as a threat to public and personal civility, these colorful figures emerge in this provocative new book as the era's most important agents of political democracy.
Through incisive portraits of the most influential journalists of the 1790s--William Cobbett, Benjamin Franklin Bache, Philip Freneau, Noah Webster, John Fenno, and William Duane--Scandal and Civility moves beyond the usual cast of "revolutionary brothers" and "founding fathers" to offer a fresh perspective on a seemingly familiar story. Marcus Daniel demonstrates how partisan journalists, both Federalist and Democratic-Republican, were instrumental in igniting and expanding vital debates over the character of political leaders, the nature of representative government, and, ultimately, the role of the free press itself. Their rejection of civility and self-restraint--not even icons like George Washington were spared their satirical skewerings--earned these men the label "peddlers of scurrility." Yet, as Daniel shows, by breaking with earlier conceptions of "impartial" journalism, they challenged the elite dominance of political discourse and helped fuel the enormous political creativity of the early republic.
Daniel's nuanced and penetrating narrative captures this key period of American history in all its contentious complexity. And in today's climate, when many decry media "excesses" and the relentlessly partisan and personal character of political debate, his book is a timely reminder that discord and difference were essential to the very creation of our political culture.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"To get some perspective one need go no further than Scandal and Civility, Marcus Daniel's detailed study of the American press in the 1970s."--Jay Wink, The Wall Street Journal

"In this spirited and well-written book, Daniel offers a new context for understanding the newspaper wars of the 1790s."--Gordon S. Wood, author of Revolutionary Characters: What Made the Founders Different

"In this spirited and well-written book, Daniel offers a new context for understanding the newspaper wars of the 1790s."--Gordon S. Wood, author of Revolutionary Characters: What Made the Founders Different

"Marcus Daniel's Scandal & Civility takes us back to the journalistic frenzy and scurrility that accompanied the rise of democratic politics in the infant American republic. It is a superb performance, one that challenges many long-established scholarly conventions while recreating the worlds (and the wars) of words that produced the likes of William Cobbett, William Duane, and the other slashing editorial combatants of the 1790s."--Sean Wilentz, author of The Rise of American Democracy: From Jefferson to Lincoln

"More than any other book, this one shows how the leading journalists of the 1790s were important public figures. Their ideas as well as their doings mattered. Evenhanded, lively, probing--a thoughtful book about thoughtful people who had a tremendous impact on the birth of American politics."--David Waldstreicher, author of Runaway America: Benjamin Franklin, Slavery, and the American Revolution

"A well-written and well-researched summary of the most important Federalist and Republican editors of the 1790s." --Journalism History

About the Author

Marcus Daniel is Associate Professor of American History at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 400 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (January 23, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0195172124
• ISBN-13: 978-0195172126
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.2 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,312,979 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Taking the issues seriously, June 9, 2009

By 

William Tell (Seattle, WA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Scandal and Civility: Journalism and the Birth of American Democracy (Hardcover)

Marcus Daniel is on a mission to rehabilitate (or at least better situate) a group of five major newspaper editors from the America of the 1790s from the dismissive attitudes of several generations of historians who bought too much in to that whole press objectivity thing. But here's the cool thing: he's doing it in such a way that us general interest readers can follow along just fine. And he's doing it at a time when a lot of the same handwringing that was going on back then is going on now.

Now before I go any further let me state right out that this book would bore many people to if not tears at least reddened, watery eyes. But I really enjoyed it.

What I liked most about Scandal and Civility is that Daniel takes his six journalists -- Benjamin Franklin Bache, William Cobbett, Philip Freneau, John Fenno William Duane and Noah Webster -- and sets up their entry in to the field, moves in to their back story and then digs in to their role in the journalism and political battles of the 1790s. The result is that the deeper in to the book you get, the better you understand the issues they were writing about and the more you can contextualize their editorial stances, political ties, reactions to and participation in the discourse of scandal and scurrility, etc. And in the end, Daniel makes his point, I think. That is: partisan journalism wasn't just some ridiculous sideshow, but rather was an important part of the political debates of the time, of the education of both politicians and voters, and of the (still debated) meaning of a free society with a free press. In the end, even one doesn't fully like each of the six men, one at least has an understanding of and perhaps even some admiration of them for sticking to their guns in the face of opposition (including politically-motivated legal action). It also totally explodes the whole model of objective journalism preached (if not actually practiced) for so many years in America. Yeah, these guys could be totally over the top, but at least they weren't trying to cloak their partisanship.

As Daniel writes near the end of the book:

"They lived in a time of political passion and intense partisan conflict. Like our own. And it was from this conflict that their own great acts of collective political creativity emerged: the Declaration of Independence, the founding of the American Republic, the establishment of the Constitution, and the federal government, the Bill of Rights, the creation of the Supreme Court, and the federal judiciary, and the invention of new institutions to express and organize public opinion, including political parties and a free press. Without such conflict, the political triumphs of the early Republic would have been impossible and even unimaginable.

"... As Americans today grapple with the problem of creating a democratic and publicly accountable media, they need to embrace political conflict and difference, the clash of divergent ideological perspectives, and the problems of political interpretation they impose on us all, not yearn for a simpler time when the press was 'objective,' when all honest, civic-minded people agreed, and when political differences could be resolved by the exercise of impartial rationality. Such a time never existed, and certainly it did not exist in the early American Republic."

Understandably, the passage of time and the writing of history puts a patina over certain epochs. Daniel argues that the Republic succeeded in part because of the partisan writing of national newspapers not in spite of it. The Founding Fathers were not noble creatures who had to rise above the journalistic hackery of the time in order to form the great institutions that have stood the test of time -- they were in the mix (sometimes financially even, very much part of that ferment of debate and political maneuvering. Here's the thing though: this book is an important corrective. But as one gets to know these six men, one realizes that even with all the scandal, they brought with them a certain learning and passion for issues. Sure, there was a lot about character and personality. But one wonders how these six outcasts would feel about the emphasis on celebrity (even in political circles) today.