Making the World Safe for Objectivity: U.S. Philanthropies and the Postwar Reorientation of Foreign Journalists

How did mid-century American journalists come to embrace the values of journalistic professionalism and espouse objectivity as a professional (if not moral) code? Media historians point to New Deal consensus and postwar economic security. Technologically-determined theories suggest that the telegraph demanded short messages, thus concise prose became the norm. Political economic theories argue that objective reporting allowed newspapers to claim neutrality and thus cast the widest possible net for audiences and advertisers. But there were other mechanisms in place that helped diffuse a journalistic ethos that embraced professionalism and the rhetorical norm of objectivity, an ethos which came to define the “golden age” of American journalism, an ethos with a global reach. This paper recounts the rich but little known story of America's post-World War II initiative to reorient international journalists from Germany and Japan. The seminars were held at Columbia University via the American Press Institute and funded by the US Army, State Department, Ford and Rockefeller foundations. On one hand, the Rockefeller Foundation's crucial postwar support illustrates the Foundation's early and ongoing role in the developing field of communication studies. On the other, the seminars reveal a kaleidoscopic overlay of motives—from humanitarianism to anti-totalitarianism; from postwar reconstruction to cold war propaganda prophylaxis. American philanthropies and American journalists came to view the professional model of journalism as a legitimate measure to spread democracy and thwart the global spread of totalitarianism. Part of a larger study based on in-depth archival research, this paper explores how the foundation-funded seminars contributed to the flowering of the objectivity norm, the genealogy of journalistic professionalism, and the mid-century sense of the heroic, objective journalist. Though intended to shape the media cultures of America's recent wartime enemies, the seminars helped construct seemingly commonsense ideals about American journalism.