By Mark Bernhardt 

As is true of everyone in the American Journalism Historians Association, I teach journalism history. I developed my university’s U.S. Media History course, which focuses on the history of United States journalism, but also includes other facets of media, such as advertising, movies, comics, and television entertainment. What is different from most members regarding my position, though, is that I am a historian in a history department, and so every course that I teach is a history course. They include courses on specific time periods of U.S. history, topical courses on the American West, sexuality, and World War II, and courses on film history regarding how films have dealt with the historical issues of intersectionality, remembering wartime experiences, and debates over controversial political matters. While journalism history is not a primary focus in most classes that I teach, I do find ways to work it in to my curriculum.

Discussion and analysis of photojournalism is the primary way in which I incorporate journalism history. My own research on journalism has analyzed the use of images in newspapers, from illustration in the early nineteenth century to reproductions of photographs in the late nineteenth century to photojournalism in the early twentieth century. I include photographs in my lecture presentations to help give students a sense of what the period looked like and how historical issues were framed. For example, I have students look at photos when discussing labor strikes from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the Dust Bowl and migration to California in the 1930s, the Vietnam War, and postindustrial urban decline in the late twentieth century.

Another way in which I incorporate journalism into my classes is through discussion of how advocacy for civil rights has been presented in the press. Whether early twentieth century suffragists, mid-twentieth century African American activists, or late twentieth century gay rights activists, the press has served an important role in defining civil rights activism for the American public, whether in a positive or negative way. I also discuss the existence of the alternative press and how it offered comparative viewpoints to what the mainstream press had to say, and strategies civil rights organizations used to gain positive coverage by the mainstream press.

Reflecting my broader work in the field of media history, in which I have written about how movie and television messaging have been influenced by and shaped public understanding of events, I use movies as primary sources in my classes. For example, my students analyze how the 1927 film It, starring Clara Bow, speaks to the place of young women in 1920s American society. When discussing African American civil rights, I will have my students watch the 1973 film The Spook who sat by the Door and consider what it has to say about the Black Power movement. I also use films in the U.S. Media History class to help my students engage with the various topics that I cover. Network is one that I assign when delving into the commercialization of the news. The Joneses, though hardly a cinematic masterpiece, affords an intriguing look at the lengths to which companies might go to advertise. Bamboozled is a fantastic portrayal of how television entertainment fails to adequately address racial representation. Finally, Wag the Dog provides a comedic look at how news media can be manipulated into pushing war propaganda.

Embracing the adage that journalism is the first draft of history, as a history professor I make it a point to have my students take a look at that first draft in various ways in the different courses that I teach.

Mark Bernhardt is a Professor in the Department of History and Philosophy at Jackson State University.