ABSTRACT
In the beginning, B.C., a 1937 miniature comic book featured Mickey Mouse writing and running his own newspaper, the Daily War-Drum. Initially, the owner/journalist/printer was a pillar of the Republic. By the late 19th century, as mammoth metropolitan newspapers came of age, ownership moved from the editor in the newsroom to the publisher in the counting room. Portrayals of newspapers in motion pictures of the 1930s weren’t all seriousness. Television dramas, novels and other forms of fiction treat the spread of newspaper chains and other big businesses as an attack on America; they romanticize the independent owner. Increasingly, fiction and film replace the metropolitan newspaper with the superficial, suspect TV network as the institutional symbol of news. Hollywood’s antipathy toward media barons, often shadowy or invisible figures, increasingly shapes its portrayal of all the press. And Hollywood’s press is that shallow infotainment called, oxymoronically, television journalism.
