The Rise of Mass Politics and Mass Media

Americans have been skeptical about the mass media and mass politics since the first half of the nineteenth century, when the extension of voting rights to all white males, along with cheaper paper and faster printing presses fundamentally transformed American political life. Now that all white men could vote (previously, in many states, only those who owned property--usually land--could vote) some Americans worried that many of these new voters would prove too irresponsible or too ill-educated to exercise the right to vote wisely. They also worried about the creation of mass political parties, in which these voters might follow leaders almost blindly.

Fears of mass politics increased over the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Some Americans fretted that the large influx of immigrants to the United States had added to the voting rolls many new citizens who were unfamiliar with American traditions or harbored radical ideas. Major newspapers (and now, even chains of newspapers) grew in circulation, and many of these newspapers practiced what their critics termed "yellow journalism," in which they made no effort to be impartial in their reporting, but instead skewed articles to suit the political views of their publishers.