A major topic in the history of journalism, taking Tamuni case as an example, discusses the relationship between politics and newspaper industry.

Tammuni Church, also known as the Order of Columbus, was founded in May 1789. It was originally a national patriotic charity in the United States, dedicated to maintaining the democratic system, especially against the upper-level theory of the Federalist Party. Later, it became the political organ of new york and the political machine of the Democratic Party.

During the period of 1858- 187 1 year, its leader was William m Tweed. He and his men embezzled 200 million dollars through various means. When The New York Times began to expose this appalling scandal, most newspapers and periodicals in new york were bought by Tweed and his gang, and they were silent. Grilli's New Tribune even accused Jones of "political revenge". In order to silence Jones, Tweed once asked someone to give Jones five million dollars, but Jones refused. Finally, somehow touched God, an insider quietly gave Jones a package of evidence of Tammany's corruption, thus making the scandal finally known to the world. As a result, Tweed was prosecuted, arrested and died in prison, while Jones and The New York Times became famous and won respect.

On the issue of exposing Tweed, American cartoonist thomas Nast's contribution can not be ignored, because his role is not under Jones. Nast is the most famous American cartoonist in the19th century. He wrote * * * and the symbol of the Party "Elephant" and the symbol of the Democratic Party "Donkey". At that time, he was a reporter for Harper's Weekly, with a long history and great reputation. He exposed the faces of Tweed and his associates to the public with a large number of cartoons, which attracted wide attention from all walks of life. Tweed once said angrily: "I don't mind what the newspaper calls me because my supporters can't read;" But they can read comics, damn it "Later, after being arrested, Tweed once escaped from prison and fled to Europe, only to be recognized by the Spanish local police and caught in the French Open. And recognize the police wearing tweed, but also because of reading nast's cartoons. This episode is still talked about by newspaper cartoonists.

From the founding of the United States to the end of 19 and the beginning of the 20 th century, the degree of corruption in the United States experienced a process of evolution from low to high. Washington, Jefferson and other American Founding Fathers, during their presidency, had relatively high moral quality, and at the same time, the government scale was relatively small and the government work was less, so the degree of corruption was relatively low. However, after the 18 12 war, corruption began to surface, and a series of incidents of embezzlement of federal funds occurred. Since then, with the acceleration of the western development process, some congressmen colluded with developers to speculate on land, and at the same time used government contracts to conduct dirty transactions and embezzle federal subsidies at will. /kloc-after the American civil war broke out in the 1960 s, the federal military expenditure increased sharply, and brokers and arms dealers colluded with corrupt officials and seized at least $3.5 billion in treasury wealth. After the end of the Civil War, the American economy entered a period of rapid development, and the degree of corruption also increased.

During President Grant's reign (1869- 1877), there was a high degree of corruption in American history. During this period, two major scandals occurred, namely, the credit company scandal and the whiskey gang incident. When building the Union Pacific Railway to expand the western region, the company manager set up a so-called credit company, and then provided the company with a profitable construction contract. The actual cost of building a railway is 44 million dollars, but the fees charged by credit companies are as high as more than 94 million dollars. Congressman Aymis is the main person in charge of this new "railway manipulation" company. In order to prevent the government from investigating the two related companies, he distributed company shares everywhere. Bribery included the then Speaker and Vice President of the House of Representatives and later President Garfield and other important figures. After the incident, only mills was condemned. Whiskey gang incident refers to the collusion between tax officials, brewers and vendors to evade taxes by millions of dollars. The case involved principal officials of the Ministry of Finance and Grant's private secretary.

188 1 President Garfield, who had just taken office, was shot dead by an unsuccessful job seeker, which highlighted the deep-seated drawbacks of the fat sharing system of political parties. Garfield's death aroused public concern about corruption and promoted the reform of the civil service system. Corruption is prevalent not only in the federal government, but also in state and local governments. Since the middle and late19th century, the party machine, especially the leaders of local parties, has manipulated the city governments and even the state governments. They control the government by buying votes from the urban poor, collecting kickbacks from government contracts and rewarding party member with government posts. The government has become a tool for small groups to seek personal gain. Many cities, such as Philadelphia, new york, Chicago, San Francisco and Baltimore. Once manipulated by political party leaders, Tammunita became the code name of corrupt city government. This situation continued until the beginning of the 20th century.

The news media, known as the "fourth power", publicly exposed the corruption of American politics for the first time by exposing the huge corruption case of Tammany Association, which is a great event in American history and a miracle in news history.

At the end of 19, with the progress of printing technology, the cost of newspapers was greatly reduced, while the expansion of cities and the growth of population made the demand for newspapers increase rapidly. During this period, the American news media gradually broke away from the dependence on the political machine financially and became increasingly independent. 1870, the proportion of independent metropolis newspapers is only 1 1%. By 1920, the proportion rose to 62% (Gentzkow, 2004). News media is no longer the tool of special interest groups such as political parties, industries and regions, but regards itself as the representative of social conscience and tries to show a completely different position from them.

In the process of curbing corruption, it is usually guided by the news media's disclosure of corrupt events or corrupt figures. The persistent pursuit and in-depth excavation of the news media, on the one hand, promoted the awakening of citizens' moral consciousness, on the other hand, had a deterrent effect on potential corrupt officials. Their exposure and criticism of political scandals often leads to politicians losing the election, and the procuratorial organs further investigate and intervene. In the presidential election of 1876, one of the main reasons why the Republican candidate lost to the Democratic Party was that the media publicized the scandal of President Grant's credit mobile company. The media's exposure and condemnation of the teapot top scandal and Tweed Group's corruption undoubtedly promoted the relevant investigations by the federal supervisory agencies. Strong public opinion supervision has effectively promoted the process of anti-corruption.

To sum up, the report of Tamuni's unjust case not only showed the great energy of the newspaper industry, but also opened the curtain for the ugly report of the American newspaper industry later. Even the "Pentagon Papers" in the 1960s, the "Watergate Incident" in the 1970s, the "Intelligence Gate Incident" in 2004 and so on. , can be clearly branded.