ABSTRACT
The news media thus assumed primary authorship of a deeply flawed national narrative: the creation myth of heroic European settlers battling an array of backward and violent non-white peoples to forge the world’s greatest democratic republic. From the earliest decades of the Republic, Americans consumed more newspapers per capita than any people on earth. A 2005 survey by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press found that only 19 percent of Americans believed the primary concern of news media was keeping them informed, while 75 percent thought they were more concerned with attracting the biggest audience. The persistence of racial inequality in the news industry is part of a broader crisis facing American journalism. Several immigrant journalists played major roles from this country in promoting press freedom and revolutionary movements in other parts of the world.
