In the early nineteenth century, critics believed the press was destroying social structure--eroding law and order and the institutions of the family, religion, and education. To counter these effects they advocated, among other things, eradicating Sunday newspapers and "subversive" content such as news of crime, sex, and sporting events. Dicken-Garcia traces the relationship between societal values and the press coverage of issues and events. Setting out to tame the press by understanding it, she argues, critics had begun to dissect it. In the process, they articulated the rudiments of journalistic theory, and proposed what issues should be addressed by journalists, what functions should be undertaken, and what standards should be imposed.

This book argues that dueling should be looked at as a fundamental part of the history of journalism. By examining the nineteenth century Code Duello, the accepted standards under which a duel is conducted, the author explores the causes of combative responses involving journalists. Each chapter examines an aspect of the practice from the nineteenth century through the present, including the connections between the ritualized aggression of the past and the feuding among blog journalists today. A comprehensive bibliography as well as an overview of accepted practices under the Code of Honor as faced by nineteenth century journalists are provided.

This collection of important new research in 19th-century media history represents some salient, recent developments in the field. Taking as its theme, the ways the media serves to define identities - national, ethnic, professional, gender, and textual, the volume addresses serials in the UK, the US, and Australia. High culture rubs shoulders with the popular press, text with image, feminist periodicals and masculine, gay, and domestic serials. Theory and history combine in research by scholars of international repute.

This research examines journalism ethics to answer the questions of whether we still need journalism ethics in the twenty-first century, if it is possible to exercise journalistic standards of work and, if so, on what values should these ethics be based in a world much different from that which existed when the first journalism codes of ethics were formulated in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. To distil the motivations and essence of the early journalistic standards of work, the book discusses the function of media in a democracy and the formation of mass media during the first industrial revolution, as well as its consequential change in journalists’ locus of control and how journalists self-identified. The sudden creation of mass media pushed some journalists to create ethical principles which would guide the newly empowered press, an effort which culminated in the creation of the first national code of journalistic ethics in 1923. The book closely examines the elements of the 1923 “Canons of Journalism”, finding them to contain timeless values, despite their original application to now dated technology. It highlights the basic elements and applies them to media today, in a way that interfaces with new technology without abandoning the essential components of equipping citizens for representative governance.