Marx y el periodismo

Tal vez porque como dice la frase "la historia la escriben los vencedores", cuando en la facultad me enseñaron -nos enseñaron- la historia del periodismo (el verdadero, el de investigación), se marca su inicio en Estados Unidos con los "muckrakers", los "husmeadores de basura", como llamaban tan simpáticamente a comienzos del siglo XX a los primeros periodistas investigadores que denunciaban los abusos, la explotación laboral, la corrupción política.

Sin embargo, el antecedente de los muckrakers podría ser otro: el propio Karl Marx.

"There is one additional aspect of Marx's career that bears directly upon communication and that became widely known in the 1970's, but few people are familiar with today: his extraordinary career as a practicing journalist. Marx devoted a large part of his life to journalism. He and Engels wrote more than 800 newspaper articles and published in some of the most important newspapers of their day. Marx's most important journalistic period was from 1842 to 1849, when he was an editor and fighting journalist in Germay, forced to confront issues of censorship and press freedom.

He was arrested numerous times for his journalistic activities. This was Marx's principal occupation from 1842 until 1849, ending with his departure for London in 1849 at the age of thirty-one, following the defeat of the 1848 revolutions. This did not end Marx's relation to journalism, however. Marx wrote for ten years (1851-61) for the New York Daily Tribune (or New York Tribune), one of the leading newspapers in the United States, with a circulation as high as 250,000 during this period. It was the paper of Horace Greeley (founder and publisher) and Charles Dana (managing editor). Marx authored 356 articles as European correspondent for the Tribune and co-authored 12 with Engels.

Marx was among the greatest journalists of the nineteenth century. As Charles Blitzer has noted: 'If preoccupation with the social and economic background of politics, and a determination to uncover the real motives that lie behind the words of politicians and governments are the hallmarks of the modern political journalism, Karl Marx may properly be said to be its father'."

(Robert Chesney, Communication Revolution, pag.55).

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