BristolCable. Norberto Soriano. All rights reserved.“Sinclair gave advice to the President – sometimes more than once a day – on how to regulate the meat packing industry through legislation” writes Thomas C Leonard in The Power of the Press. After Upton Sinclair published his groundbreaking novel The Jungle in 1906 on Chicago’s meat industry, the socialist author met the president in confidence to advise Roosevelt on government strategy. This wasn’t an unusual move for the President who used to regularly invite investigative journalists – or muckrakers – to the White House and work closely with them on developing government policy.
As spelt out in the Journalism of Outrage, “The connection between muckrakers and policymakers may have been less remote and adversarial than the conventional wisdom mandates”. Sinclair’s closed-door meetings with Roosevelt, no matter how progressive in their cause on this occasion, point to a proximity between press and politics which over decades has morphed and eroded public trust in the media.
Collapsing trust and viability
Fast forward to 2017, and it was recently reported that the BBC’s political editor, Laura Kuenssberg, was to address the Conservative party conference; strongly suggesting a bias on her part towards the centre-right party. The report went viral, although it was entirely inaccurate. It was a moment which highlighted how the public were ready to believe that our media isn’t impartial and is far too close to policymakers and big business.
