Truth, Politics, and the Press in Revolutionary America
My students and I spend a lot of time discussing historical “truth” expressed of public or personal opinion (in memory studies, for example). Our conversations tend to boil down to the acknowledgement of a negotiation between objective reality and subjective perspective. Of course, what historical actors understood as the “truth” in any particular instance is really just a perspective of what went down reflected through the lens of their personal worldview.
Now, when it comes to the historical press. Well that’s a fun one, because any of number of things might have been afoot. Newspapers, especially those that traveled more partisan paths, often offered stories that manipulated the news in an effort to support some or another agenda. Journalists and editors might also have curated stories to appeal to their particular audiences - overlooking things that, well…didn’t. Nothing extraordinarily new here. Students are today well versed suspicious looking-journalism.
But what often trips them up is the press as a primary source. I think it takes them a sec to figure out that historical journalism can be just as suspect as anything they read today. And thus in class, we take care to unpack the biases, the motivations, and the agendas…even the marketing of the press - just like we might if we were reading today’s New York Times opinion column.
It’s here where Jordon Taylor’s new book comes in handy. Misinformation Nation (a clever title, I might say…) shows us how early Americans consumed and processed the news as they sorted through their own politics in a revolutionary era. Sound familiar? Yeah…students figure that out pretty quick too. The idea that there might have been newspapers out there steering public opinion resonates with them in clear ways.
But Taylor adds nuance to the story of simplistic willful manipulation of the press (what cynics might assume is always in play), and this is where I think his book adds to the classroom conversation. He points to the difficulty is verification, for one, and suggests that editors might have had difficulty figuring out what was reliable evidence and what was not. And…since there were contradictory sources in the mix, the people wound up getting a vision of reality that did not necessarily match up to what was actually transpiring, and the responded accordingly - sometimes violently.
So does this mean the press was reporting with questionable evidence? Yup - that’s precisely what it means. A great example would be the case of the French Revolution. Those of you who stayed awake in 10th grade history should remember that early Americans were divided in their support of the situation in Europe. Some embraced the revolutionary agenda of republican France and their denunciation of oppression and arbitrary rule, while others rejected the violence and chaos spiraling out of control in Paris.
And here’s something kinda interesting - a good deal of the reporting on the French Revolution came from English sources, which, as you might imagine, were not exactly sympathetic to the revolutionary spirit. When the American press picked this up, they were starting with skewed reporting…see where this is going? Correct you are: Americans wound up shaping their responses to misinformation - or at the very least, biased information.
What I found super compelling is Taylor’s analysis was his take on the commodification of news and the powerful editors that marketed information to suit one or another constituency. The news, despite all its shortcomings in regard to reliable source networks, contributed to political identities. I guess this has a whole lot to do with what we call confirmation bias these days. You get what you seek, so to speak.
Reading this book will surely reinforce the notion that, while information did not travel as fast as it does today and editors were more likely to reprint something than investigate an event themselves, factional journalism was alive and well in the 18th century - relentlessly feeding a hungry partisan audience. And as a result, “truthful” accounts of reality were far from it…indeed sometimes dangerous.
So, teachers might want to pick up a copy of this book to supplement their discussion of ideas and how they circulated in the 18th century. I do a lot with this, really - especially in the realm of pamphleteering and the dissemination of “reason” connecting with the principle of liberty. In fact, I do a whole thing on the “contagion of liberty” with the help of Bernard Bailyn’s ideas in The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution. It’s always nice to muddy the waters, so to speak. I’m happy to discuss further…you know what to do :)
With compliments,
Keith