ABSTRACT
For Joseph Pulitzer, journalism became a weapon to avenge himself on his oppressors. In coverage of national politics, Pulitzer was a liberal Democrat who learned the usefulness of character assassination by studying Radical Republican press of the 1860s and 1870s. Pulitzer argued that, The World should be more powerful than the President, because the President came from partisan politics and was elected to a four year term, while the World goes on year after year and is free to tell truth. Pulitzer began the process of framing the oppression story for twentieth century popular consumption, but it was William Randolph Hearst who took Pulitzer's insights, spread them across the nation. Hearst loved newspapering. The term 'muckraking', which came to describe journalistic behavior during this century's first decade, grew out of President Theodore Roosevelt's response to early articles in Phillips' series. Roosevelt let fly in a speech full of such memorable critiques of journalistic practice that it deserves quoting at length.
