JM - Publick Occurrences, Both Foreign and Domestick Lesson

Publick Occurrences, Both Foreign and Domestick

Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.

- Thomas Jefferson, letter to Col. Edward Carrington, Jan. 16, 1787

As noted in the introduction, print media--specifically newspapers and pamphlets--were essential tools for the dissemination of information in Colonial America. During the American Revolution, the press provided news, but also helped to incite rebellion against England. The founding fathers understood both the necessity and the power of a free press. Prior to the inclusion of the Bill of Rights in 1791, the Constitution did not provide any assurances to publishers. Note the angst in the tone of the following 1787 quotation in the Freeman's Journal, a newspaper in Philadelphia.

"As long as the liberty of the press continues unviolated, and the people have the right of expressing and publishing their sentiments upon every public measure, it is next to impossible to enslave a free nation. Men of an aspiring and tyrannical disposition, sensible of this truth, have ever been inimical to the press, and have considered the shackling of it, as the first step towards the accomplishment of their hateful domination, and the entire suppression of all liberty of public discussion, as necessary to its support. For even a standing army, that grand engine of oppression, if it were as numerous as the abilities of any nation could maintain, would not be equal to the purposes of despotism over an enlightened people. An abolition of that grand palladium of freedom, the liberty of the press, in the proposed plan of government, and the conduct of its authors, and patrons, is a striking exemplification of these observations."

Considering the less free nations of the world today, think about how the state controls the flow of information. The population may be terrified by physical force, but often, people remain oppressed by the lack of communication with those more free.

 

Reading Assignment: "History of Newspapers in America"

Read the following essay that describes the origins of the newspaper business in the United States. Click here to read the article "History of Newspapers in America." Links to an external site.

History of Journalism in America

The next piece of writing describes the immense growth of print media but also hints at the serious crisis that newspapers are facing today.

In A Nutshell

America's first newspaper, Publick Occurrences, was published in Boston in 1690.

Today, just over three centuries later, we have more than 1,400 dailies in this country, with the two largest (USA Today and The Wall Street Journal) claiming circulations exceeding two million readers each. The first newspaper promised to provide its readers with the news, "both foreign and domestic." Today, we expect our newspaper to do the same, but our definition of what constitutes the news has expanded considerably over the centuries. We would now consider the religious commentary and sermons that filled many of the first American newspapers to be totally out of place--just as they would surely deem inappropriate the attention we pay to crime, scandal, sports, and entertainment in today's papers.

The newspaper is one of our most revered cultural institutions—but its history has been one of change and adaptation. Today, with the rise of the internet, we stand on the brink of another revolution in the delivery of news. The next century may bring changes to the news industry, and perhaps even to our definition of the news itself, as dramatic as those separating Publick Occurrences from USA Today.

Works Cited:

Shmoop Editorial Team. "History of Journalism in America." Shmoop.com.

Shmoop University, Inc., 11 Nov. 2008. Web. 15 Dec 2010.

Documentation

The works cited note at the end of this brief article is the proper MLA format for citing a source. We have already studied the proper MLA style for formatting writing. Watch the video below to review instructions on how to cite the sources used in formal writing. Be sure to take notes on parenthetical documentation and the Works Cited page.

Investigation

From the early newspapers to the current household names, newspapers have served a vital role in preserving American democracy. The freedom of the press, though guaranteed in the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, has been a freedom that has had to evolve over the last two centuries. Besides the obvious limits that preclude the publishing of defamatory or libelous statements, there have been numerous issues that have defined the scope of this freedom. A recent Supreme Court decision limited the freedom of the press for school newspapers. In a 5-4 decision, the court decided that a principal had the right to edit or censor student writing.

Read the following excerpt from the transcript of the court proceedings.

Hazelwood v. Kuhlmeier

QUESTION: What if the journalism professor just thought that this article is in bad taste?

MR. BAINE: Well, in the scheme of things, as the journalistic courses are set up at the secondary level, the teacher has a lot of control over good taste. One of the things that they were to learn in Journalism I was that business of taste and the community standard. Where that is, I think that is best left decided at a local level.

QUESTION: You would say that good journalists have good taste, and that you can teach that in a journalism class?

MR. BAINE: Well, I think that you can teach not good taste, but I think that you can teach an acceptable standard which does not suppress viewpoint, all right, and then allow the student and everybody else to grow as their time and maturity grows.

QUESTION: Mr. Baine, supposing in this particular journalism class the faculty and the school board said we are going to let you put out a student newspaper and it is a little bit devoted to journalism, but one thing that we want you to understand above everything else is that the faculty advisor has the absolute authority to censor anything if he is a man or she if she is a woman wants to, it may be arbitrary but if you come into the class that is what you are going to come up with.

MR. BAINE: Well, as a matter of fact --

QUESTION: Do you think that would violate the First Amendment if the faculty advisor goes ahead and says look, I just do not think much of this article, it does not suit me?

MR. BAINE: Well, Mr. Chief Justice, I think that --

QUESTION: Can you answer the question?

MR. BAINE: I think that they could do that, yes. In fact, I think that is what they did do when they adopted the curriculum and the curriculum guide indicating that the teacher was in fact an editor and not a censor. The only objection that I would have with the word that you used in your question was the word censor. Because I really believe that what a teacher does, in that case, is edit.

QUESTION: Well, it is really kind of a fine point of language. Because I suppose that the final editor might be viewed as a censor, too, if that person does not agree with what the people beneath him have done and changes it. You know, some people might call it editing and other people might call it censorship.

MR. BAINE: Well, the only distinction that I have between censorship and editing is that censorship in my opinion is somebody who is outside of the process who comes in and says for some reason or other you have violated whatever you have violated and I want to stop that publication.

QUESTION: You are saying here that the teacher was part of the process.

MR. BAINE: Part of the process and defined by the curriculum to be so and encouraged to be so, and found by the trial court to be active. And again we get back into the storyline ideas coming from the teacher, the revision process coming from the teacher, the adoption, and the approval.

QUESTION: Mr. Baine, what that really adds up to is no First Amendment protection than in that circumstance, none for the students.

Source: The Oyez Project, Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier, 484 U.S. 260

(1988)

The exchange here elucidates an interesting point about connotation and diction. We expect that editors not only have a right but are expected to change, alter, even eliminate writing in a publication. That is simply the job description. The word "censorship" may involve the same process, but the connotation infers suppression of the freedom of speech.

Self-Assessment and Practice

The first newspaper published in America was Publick Occurrences, Both Foreign and Domestick, and the 10th newspaper was either The Weekly Rehearsal or the South-Carolina Weekly Journal. Place the following newspapers in order from 2nd through 9th.

Drag the items from the bottom to the slots on the right.

RESOURCES IN THIS MODULE ARE OPEN EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES (OER) OR CREATED BY GAVS UNLESS OTHERWISE NOTED. SOME IMAGES USED UNDER SUBSCRIPTION.