"A MIRROR OF THE TIMES" A history of the mirror metaphor in journalism

This is a cultural history of how the mirror was invoked as a metaphor for newspapers and journalism during parts of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in the United States. This study examines how journalists' own discourse invoked the mirror as a metaphor and how this discourse related to the broader cultural understanding about the nature of mirrors. Three main meanings emerged-the mirror as means for self-reflection and moral judgment, the mirror as reliable reflection of events, and the mirror as reflection of the nature of a newspaper's readership or market.