Unfreedom of the Press Page 6
But the historical evidence paints a picture of a colonial press that is courageous, vigorous, and openly partisan about America’s principles in promoting and defending the cause and arguments for the revolution—and, in fact, reflecting the remarkable unity of Americans during the revolutionary period. Therefore, the colonial press itself is deplored by subsequent progressive historians—not for its activism but the wrong kind of activism. Humphrey writes: “With a growing interest in the role of economics in history, more recent progressive historians have questioned the motives for the actions of the Revolutionary printers. Several have concluded that most pressmen supported the Patriot cause for reasons of economic survival rather than any strong ideological commitment.”29 Hence, for these progressives, the press was part of a self-interested ruse that successfully bamboozled the masses into risking their livelihoods, lifestyles, and even their lives to go to war against the most powerful military force on the planet.
But facts are facts. And the fact is, as Humphrey observes, that “most Americans concluded that the efforts of Patriot newspaper printers to keep readers informed about the war helped ensure ultimate success by boosting people’s morale and rallying Americans to the cause until victory was achieved. . . . For the Patriots involved in the American Revolution, the weekly news sheets published throughout America were an essential part of the fight. By keeping people informed about the war’s progress, newspapers made winning independence possible. . . . Newspapers were essential in the fight to win independence and thus were essential in the creation of the United States.”30
Consequently, the early printers, pamphleteers, and newspaper publishers were truly brave souls—they were patriots, pioneers, and entrepreneurs, both leaders of and reflective of the colonists and their commitment to liberty and revolution. They risked everything to advance and defend an independent nation and civil society based on the ancient truths and observations of Aristotle and later Cicero, among others; the Enlightenment principles and reasoning of John Locke and Montesquieu, among others; and specifically, the moral underpinnings of natural law and natural rights, the unalienable rights of the individual, liberty, equal justice, property rights, freedom of speech, and, yes, freedom of the press—in sum, this is the essence of the Declaration of Independence, the formal proclamation of the united colonies and America’s founding.
While asserting their own support for freedom of the press, it is difficult to square the modern media’s progressivism and social activism with the Declaration’s principles, given that every prominent progressive intellectual at the turn of the twentieth century denounced the Declaration as an old and stale way of thinking about society, set in a preindustrialized, largely agrarian culture, thereby emphasizing the individual over the community, personal interests over the general welfare, and limited taxation and government over the government’s need to be a dynamic force, led by experts, in order to better plan and organize society. For similar reasons, the early progressive intellectuals condemned the Constitution’s separation of powers and deference to state sovereignty as conflicting with social engineering and collectivism.
In understanding the mentality of the modern media, it is crucial to understand the extent to which progressives reject so much of America’s early history. For example, in 1907, in a Fourth of July address about the Declaration, Woodrow Wilson, a renowned progressive intellectual and historian, then president of Princeton University, and future president of the United States, wrote:
It is common to think of the Declaration of Independence as a highly speculative document; but no one can think it so who has read it. It is a strong, rhetorical statement of the grievances against the English government. It does indeed open with the assertion that all men are equal and that they have certain inalienable rights, among them the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It asserts that governments were instituted to secure these rights, and can derive their just powers only from the consent of the governed; and it solemnly declares that “whenever any government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a new government, laying its foundations on the principles, and organizing its powers in such forms, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.” But this would not afford a general theory of government to formulate policies upon. No doubt we are meant to have liberty, but each generation must form its own conception of what liberty is. No doubt we shall always wish to be given leave to pursue happiness as we will, but we are not yet sure where or by what method we shall find it. That we are free to adjust government to these ends we know. But Mr. Jefferson and his colleagues in the Continental Congress prescribed the law of adjustment for no generations but their own. They left us to say whether we thought the government they had set up was founded on “such principles,” its powers organized in “such forms” as seemed to us most likely to effect our safety and happiness. They did not attempt to dictate the aims and objects of any generation but their own. . . .31
Wilson continued:
So far as the Declaration of Independence was a theoretical document, that is its theory. Do we still hold it? Does the doctrine of the Declaration of Independence still live in our principles of action, in the things we do, in the purposes we applaud, in the measures we approve? It is not a question of piety. We are not bound to adhere to the doctrines held by the signers of the Declaration of Independence; we are as free as they were to make and unmake governments. We are not here to worship men or a document. But neither are we here to indulge in a mere theoretical and uncritical eulogy. Every Fourth of July should be a time for examining our standards, our purposes, for determining afresh what principles, what forms of power we think most likely to effect our safety and happiness. That and that alone is the obligation the Declaration lays upon us. It is no fetish; its words lay no compulsion upon the thought of any free man; but it was drawn by men who thought, and it obliges those who receive its benefits to think likewise. . . .”32
Thus the absurdity of the progressive historians and their attempt to hijack and rewrite the history of America’s founding becomes clear. More to the point, it can be fairly said that the modern media and most journalists who share this progressive attitude must also reject the principles of their press forefathers, the founders of the free press who urged rebellion against Britain—although they undoubtedly appreciate their wisdom in establishing a free press.
But what has become of freedom of the press? Have today’s newsrooms and journalists lived up to their purposes?
THREE
* * *
THE MODERN DEMOCRATIC PARTY-PRESS
HISTORIANS WRITE OF the “party-press era,” roughly from the 1780s to the 1860s, not long after the founding of the United States.
What was the party-press era? It was a time when most newspapers aligned themselves with a politician, campaign, or party, and did so openly. As described by California State University associate professor Charles L. Ponce De Leon: “Sparked by divergent plans for the future of the new republic, competing factions emerged within George Washington’s administration and Congress, and by the mid-1790s each faction had established partisan newspapers championing its point of view. These publications were subsidized through patronage, and, though they had a limited circulation, the material they published was widely reprinted and discussed, and contributed to the establishment of the nation’s first political parties, the Federalists and the Democratic-Republicans [or Republicans].”1
Ponce De Leon added: “Newspapers like Philip Freneau’s National Gazette, writes the most prominent [Republican] organ, crafted distinctly partisan lenses through which readers were encouraged to view the world. Specializing in gossip, innuendo, and ad hominem attacks, these newspapers sought to make readers fearful about the intentions of their opponents. The strategy was quite effective at arousing support and mobilizing voters to go to the polls—after all, the fate of the republic appeared to be at stake.
. . .”2
Virginia Tech associate professor Jim A. Kuypers explains that the Gazette was anti-Federalist and anti–George Washington, and it had the backing of Thomas Jefferson. “Jefferson’s view was that Freneau merely provided balance to John Fenno’s Federalist Gazette of the United States, arguing, ‘The two papers will show you both sides of our politics.’ Freneau later infuriated Washington with an editorial titled ‘The Funeral of George Washington’; that, and his attack on Alexander Hamilton’s economic program, left the National Gazette as an unmistakable mouthpiece of Republican views. Jefferson himself was targeted for equally vicious slanders by journalist James T. Callender, who afflicted politicians of all stripes, including Jefferson’s bete noir Alexander Hamilton and his old friend John Adams. . . .”3
According to University of Virginia professor Peter Onuf, the 1800 presidential election, which saw Jefferson challenging Adams, “reached a level of personal animosity seldom equaled in American politics. The Federalists attacked the fifty-seven-year-old Jefferson as a godless Jacobin who would unleash the forces of bloody terror upon the land. With Jefferson as President, so warned one newspaper, ‘Murder, robbery, rape, adultery, and incest will be openly taught and practiced, the air will be rent with the cries of the distressed, the soil will be soaked with blood, and the nation black with crimes.’ Others attacked Jefferson’s deist beliefs as the views of an infidel who ‘writes aghast the truths of God’s words; who makes not even a profession of Christianity; who is without Sabbaths; without the sanctuary, and without so much as a decent external respect for the faith and worship of Christians.’ ”4
“The luckless Adams was ridiculed from two directions,” writes Onuf. “By the Hamiltonians within his own party and by the Jeffersonian-Republicans from the outside. For example, a private letter in which Hamilton depicted Adams as having ‘great and intrinsic defects in his character’ was obtained by Aaron Burr and leaked to the national press. It fueled the Republican attack on Adams as a hypocritical fool and tyrant. His opponents also spread the story that Adams had planned to create an American dynasty by the marriage of one of his sons to a daughter of King George III. According to this unsubstantiated story, only the intervention of George Washington, dressed in his Revolutionary military uniform, and the threat by Washington to use his sword against his former vice president had stopped Adams’s scheme.”5
But it was the presidential campaign of 1828, between President John Quincy Adams and challenger Andrew Jackson, that many consider among the most brutal of the early contests. Once again, the party-press was in the thick of it.
As described by the Hermitage website: “By 1828, Jackson was ready to win the White House. First he would suffer through a bruising campaign still recognized today as one of the most malicious in American history. Adams’s supporters accused Jackson of being a military tyrant who would use the presidency as a springboard for his own Napoleonic ambitions of empire. For proof, they brought out every skeleton in Jackson’s closet: his duels and brawls, his execution of troops for desertion, his declaration of martial law in New Orleans, his friendship with Aaron Burr and his invasions of Spanish Florida in 1814 and 1818. . . .”6 “The most painful attack for Jackson, by far, was that on his and Rachel’s character over their marriage. Technically, Rachel was a bigamist and Jackson her partner in it. Adams’s supporters thus judged Jackson as morally unfit to hold the nation’s highest office.” Jackson’s allies “struck back with attacks on corrupt officials in the Adams administration and labeled Adams an elitist who wanted to increase the size and power of government to benefit the aristocracy.”7
But historian Robert Remini observes that the Jacksonians created “a vast, nationwide newspaper system.”8
Kuypers explains that “at the time that ‘newspapers’ emerged as a driving force in American political life, they had little to do with objective news. Quite the contrary, they deliberately reported everything with a political slant, and were intended to be biased. Nor did they hide their purpose: it was in their names, such as the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, or the Arizona Republican. . . . Partisanship was their primary raison d’etre. Editors viewed readers as voters who needed to be guided to appropriate views, then mobilized to vote.”9
In fact, Kuypers asserts, so corrupt was the relationship between the press and Jacksonians that “many editors owed their jobs directly and specifically to the Jacksonians. . . . Jackson himself appointed numerous editors to salaried political positions, including many postmasters, while nationally it is estimated that 50–60 editors had been given plum political jobs. Rewarding political friends was nothing new—the Federalists had appointed nearly 1,000 editors to postmaster positions over a 12-year period—but the Jacksonians transformed an ad hoc approach to appointments to a strategic plan. Under such circumstances, few readers of ‘news’ doubted where a paper stood on a particular position, nor did people think they were receiving objective facts upon which to make reasoned decisions.”10
Historian Harold Holzer describes the impact of party-journalism and its power to influence politics and the electorate in the years before the Civil War: “By the 1850s . . . almost no independent voters were left in America, only Democrats and Whigs (most of whom later became Republicans), and nearly all of them avid readers of newspapers. Kept in a perpetual state of political arousal by journalism, and further stimulated by election cycles that drew voters to the polls several times each year, not just on the first Tuesdays of November, the overwhelming majority regarded politics with a fervor that approached religious awakening, evoking interest characteristic of modern sports or entertainment. With only a few notable exceptions, few unaligned newspapers prospered.”11
Sadly, this sounds quite similar to the media environment today.
In point of fact, the party-press is back, and with a vengeance. Of course, there are certain differences between the party-press of old and its present-day incarnation, but there is no denying its reality.
While today’s editors and journalists are not on the payroll of the post office or other federal departments, and are not subsidized by political parties, the revolving door of journalists and/or their family members serving primarily in Democratic administrations, Democratic congressional offices, and Democratic campaigns—and vice versa—is a fact.
The evidence of a progressive ideological mindset sympathetic to and supportive of the Democratic Party, in which news is “interpreted” or “analyzed” or “given context,” and where “social activism” is an essential and overarching framework for reporting, results in writing and broadcasting that mainly conform to the objectives, policies, and principles of the modern Democratic Party and the progressive agenda.
Importantly, unlike the early party-press era, where newspapers lined up fairly evenly behind one party or the other or one candidate or the other, and transparently proclaimed their partisanship, the current party-press also differs in that news outlets are overwhelmingly supportive of the Democratic Party and hostile to the Republican Party—particularly conservatives—and, these days, virulently antagonistic to President Donald Trump, his supporters, and his policies.
Indeed, on January 15, 2018, veteran newsman and columnist Andrew Malcolm summed up “the current sad state of American political journalism” as so thoroughly and obviously anti-Trump that it has inflamed and balkanized the public. In his opinion piece, titled “Media’s Anti-Trump Addiction Amps Up the Outrage and Fuels the Public’s Suspicion,” Malcolm observes that “much of today’s political journalism has fallen into advocacy, intentionally inflammatory, using or omitting selective details, quotes and background to make a case against President Donald Trump. The criticism generally centers on something he did or said he would do—or something someone, usually unidentified, said he might do or is considering possibly doing. And then in a kind of Kabuki dance, journalists run to gather reaction from waiting opponents who provide a predictably outraged quote calling for counteraction.”12
Wh
en media outlets and journalists conduct themselves this way, they “den[y] Americans a set of generally-accepted facts to debate,” writes Malcolm, “merely providing fodder for an anti-Trump agenda and more argumentative ammo for both sides. . . . The Washington media rightly claim the duty to check presidential statements. Unfortunately, they couldn’t find the time or inclination to apply the same regimen to former President Obama’s words as they have imposed on Trump’s. Otherwise, Obama would have been called out for the 36 times he promised we could keep our doctor and health plan, the countless specious claims that al Qaeda was on the run, the false suggestion that Russia was no longer a strategic competitor and the laughable claim that his administration experienced no scandal during its 2,922 days.”13
When reporting on a Democratic president and his progressive agenda, the same newsrooms and reporters take a very different approach. “That’s because,” writes Malcolm, “the D.C. media, by and large, sympathized with Obama’s election and policies. And while the election of an African American was historic, it was not the historically shocking upset that Trump’s base delivered to him—and us. An upset that far too many political journalists have been unable to digest and have allowed to corrupt their professionalism. . . .”14
Moreover, press reports are filled with headlines and breaking news akin to supermarket tabloids. The public is subjected to daily if not hourly hype about “news” reports and “alerts” often based on wishful thinking, speculation, partisan advocacy, anonymous sources, and outright inaccuracies. Virtually anyone with a gripe against President Trump is treated as a newsmaker and repeatedly provided multiple national media formats and platforms to air their criticisms. The list is too long and the examples too numerous to reproduce here, but a few will suffice: