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Journalistic Ethics (Part I)
Note: This post was prompted by fellow member @bryangstephens, with whom I have had an on-going discussion spread over a vast number of unrelated threads concerning the nature of the press, the First Amendment and their role in American politics.
Between the Civil War and the Great Depression, virtually every decent-sized American city had at least two newspapers. In addition to the popular press, many communities also had papers of ethnic or racial focus. Some of those papers, such as the Pittsburgh Courier, became influential outside of their areas of ownership and became important voices nationally. The Courier’s Wendell Smith was instrumental in helping Branch Rickey break baseball’s color barrier with the elevation of Jackie Robinson to the Brooklyn Dodgers.