Journalistic Uses of Collective Memory

It has become cliched to assert that journalists write the first draft of history. Far less attention heas been paid to who does the rewrites. Frequently, second drafts of history are also written by journalists. The typology developed here describes the ways journalists use our public past and offers some insights about the process of collective memory development in the news media. Commemorative journalism seems to offer the best chance to reexamine our past, but may offer little incentive to do so. Historical analogies may not encourage us to contest the meaning of the past due to the simple, dramatic narratives of news reporting. Historical contexts may not encourage us to look closely at the meaning we ascribe to the past either, because they are presented as facts rather than interpretations.

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