Preston Edmands Paper 5 – Referential Classification

English Comp 1301 April 11, 2011

Section 075 Final Draft

“The Influence of Print Media On American Politics”

Many examples of the print media acting as a medium of influence on public

attitudes and government policy can be drawn from the rich wellspring of its history in

America. This brief essay will discuss three such examples: The Stamp Act of 1765 and

ensuing revolution, the ratification of the United States Constitution and its first ten

amendments, and the period immediately before the rapid escalation that lead to the

Spanish-American war of 1898. All three events illustrated a consistent focus on politics

as the dominant framework of print media in the 18th and 19th centuries.

In 1765, two years after colonial victory of the French and Indian war, Britain

continued to be burdened with substantive debt from aiding the American effort and

fighting both France and Spain on several Atlantic shores. Britain alleviated some of the

debt by shifting it onto the shoulders of the colonists. Through navigation acts that

brutally enforced import taxes, Parliament enacted legislation that “transformed the

thirteen colonies, all but one having been founded on entrepreneurial enterprise, into a

source of revenue for the Royal Monarchy” (Kennedy 43). Americans already boxed in

by the Proclamation of 1763, an act that prohibited colonial expansion into virgin

territories west of the Appalachians, became furious when Parliament signed The Stamp

Act of 1765 into law. The act mandated “the use of stamped papers or the affixing of
stamps certifying payment of tax on over fifty printed goods, including pamphlets and

newspapers” (“Newspapers in the 18th Century”).

Economically stunting, The Stamp Act gravely threatened the financial viability

of colonial American printing presses and caused a larger number of their operators (or

printers, in colloquial terms) to resist the tax on behalf of and through print media. They

issued local reports of protest, which were circulated throughout the thirteen colonies,

inviting their readers to witness the country’s restive spirit. By doing so, these printers

“became allied with rebels hoping to inflame anti-British sentiment, who would use these

so-called ‘newsletters’ to politically educate civilians wherever Britain failed to maintain

a sufficient military presence” (“Newspapers in the 18th Century”). Printers wanted to

secure their ‘freedom of the press’ as much as political rebels wanted to protect their

colonial government and its citizens from persecution by British Parliament (“History of

American newspapers”). United in protecting their beloved presses from bankruptcy,

these printers joined the rebels in the fight against British Imperialism.

Rebel printers helped form the Committees of Correspondence, which exchanged

ideas on republicanism, circulated seditious papers that argued for independence, and

coordinated colonial petitions to be submitted before the Crown (“Committees of

Correspondence”). The Committees rallied for revolutionary causes and established plans

for collective action, quickly refining their organization into a communications network

greatly enhanced by the speed with which the press could print political pamphlets and

colonial newspapers. The press allowed committee members to inform readers both

within the colonies and abroad of mounting opposition to the taxes. The disaffection of

Britain was all of America’s to read and interpret. The printing of such propaganda was

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almost as old as the press itself, but newspaper editors set a precedent that continues to

this day when, in their dedicated passion for independence, they presented reports biased

in its favor.

In April of 1775, the colonies reached a tipping point. A British attempt to arrest

Samuel Adams and John Hancock, two members of the revolutionary effort who were

residing in Boston, twisted into the bloody battles at Lexington and Concord. During the

resulting American Revolution, printers and newspaper editors became further divided

along contentious political lines into two colonial factions.

Patriots (also known as American Whigs, Revolutionaries, Congress-Men or

Rebels) were the names of colonists who had rebelled against British control during the

American Revolution. It was their leading figures who, in July 1776, declared the United

States of America an independent nation. Their rebellion was based on the political

philosophy of republicanism, as expressed by pamphleteers, such as Thomas Jefferson,

Alexander Hamilton, and Thomas Paine.

Loyalists believed resistance to the Crown—the legitimate government of the

colonies—was morally wrong. They were alienated when the Patriots resorted to

violence, such as burning houses and tarring and feathering. Loyalists wanted to take a

middle-of-the road position and were reluctantly pushed by the Patriots to declare

opposition. The editors within this minority chose to ignore all news of anti-British

protest and rabble-rousing, attempting to counteract the revolutionary fervor of the

Patriots with the feeble stubbornness of silence. These editors quietly asserted highly

unpopular opinions in a climate hostile to their apathy and were widely condemned in the

colonies.

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 Editorializing, now understood to be an important tool of informing public

attitudes, became both a weapon to destroy the opposition and a threat when found in

enemy hands. Radical groups of Patriots like the Sons of Liberty prevented Loyalist

editors from printing British news and opinion, kept them from slanting colonial reports

in favor of the British war effort, and roughed up Loyalist printers for sympathizing with

the deplorable British Empire.

The Revolutionary War ended in 1783 with the signing of the Treaty of Paris, in

which Britain formally recognized independence of the United States. As the fledgling

American nation struggled towards a viable form of sovereignty, its newspapers took on

an even greater role in shaping public opinion, and “something approximating a national

conversation emerged” (Postman 31).

The Federalist Papers, an out-pouring of eighty-five essays written by Alexander

Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay—all under the name of Publius—originally

appeared in a New York newspaper during 1787 – 1788 and were read almost as widely

in the South as the North. The essays outlined a lucid and compelling version of the

philosophy and motivation of the proposed Constitution, which was to act as the guiding

political document of the United States government. The authors of the essays wanted

both to “influence the vote in favor of ratification and to shape future interpretations of

the Constitution” (Postman 37). After a short period of governance under the Articles of

Confederation, the people of the United States adopted the Constitution on September 17,

1787.

The press had been central in gathering public support for the new Constitution.

For this reason, the founding fathers of America—many of them Patriots during the

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revolution—understood the need to protect freedom of the press to publish any and all

materials it desired. Though the Constitution was a reasonably sound document, the

founding fathers saw that an opportunist with the ability could exploit various loopholes

that remained in the Constitution and turn the democracy into a much more oppressive

regime. They decided to further “define certain liberties and clarify their absolute

protection from tyranny by proceeding to amend the Constitution with the Bill of Rights”

(Kennedy 58).

The Bill of Rights, enacted in 1791, consists of the first ten Constitutional

Amendments. The First Amendment states “Congress shall make no law… abridging the

freedom of speech, or of the press.” This encouraged newspapers to become prominent

record keepers and guardians of true political transparency, but also allowed “plenty of

room for them to become mouthpieces for the political opinion of Editors” (Postman 28).

Rather than merely reporting on biased news, editors began directly stating their own

political opinions in their papers, rather than relying on more objective reporting. By the

close of the eighteenth century, editors had become “actively involved in forming the

political system of the United States” (“Newspapers in the 18th Century”).

In the golden age of print media that fell between 1890 and 1920, Editors Joseph

Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst both owned gargantuan newspaper empires that

competed with each other for readership in New York City and throughout the country.

Their competitive practices included raiding each other’s staff and refining a brand of

reporting known as yellow journalism, a type of journalism that “presents little or no

legitimate, well-researched news and instead uses eye-catching headlines to sell more

newspapers” (“Newspapers in the 20th Century”). Yellow journalism includes

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exaggerations of news events, scandal mongering, and sensationalism. According to Neil

Postman, it was these sorts of techniques Hearst used to increase sales, which lead to the

Spanish-American War of 1898 (52).

In 1898 the USS Maine inexplicably sank off the coast of Cuba after its hull was

severely damaged by a mysterious explosion. An investigation by the United States

declared a naval mine caused the explosion, while Spanish officials insisted it wasn’t an

act of war but rather a cache of gunpowder that had ignited within the ship itself. Hearst

and Pulitzer, in their frantic bid to increase the readership of their newspapers, used the

crisis to whip up national fervor for war. When his foreign correspondent Frederic

Remington assured him that conditions in Cuba were not dire enough to warrant

hostilities, Hearst responded that if Frederic would simply “furnish the pictures,” he

would “furnish the war.” This bold-faced declaration of the extent to which his

newspaper could influence political was hardly an exaggeration. Headlines such as

“Remember the Maine!” and “to hell with Spain” appeared regularly, and both Hearst

and Pulitzer’s papers vilified the Spanish and their treatment of Cubans. In April of 1898,

two months after the sinking of the USS Maine, Washington formally declared war. The

Spanish-American War lasted only ten weeks, the outcome being the 1898 Treaty of

Paris. The treaty granted the United States several island possessions spanning the globe,

and generated a “rancorous new debate over the wisdom of imperialism” (“Newspapers

in the 20th Century”).

In conclusion, the preceding three moments from America’s history not only

serve as examples of the varying relations between America and foreign powers, but also

represent the important role print media has played in shaping significant, contemporary

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events. By circulating a wealth of information and text, made possible with the invention

of the hand-operated press, printers and editors gave the general public access to these

events, many happening in distant and unfamiliar places around the world.

It is hard to measure the full extent to which print media has shaped and been

shaped by the opinions of its editors and readers alike. What is clear is that print media

has powerful effects on public attitudes and has in it the potential to be abused by those

who control it. Its primary focus on politics that evolved out of colonial America, along

with the oft-strong political leanings of its editors, combine to make print media a force

for influence on public opinion and, consequently, government action.

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 Works Cited

"Committees of Correspondence." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The

Free Encyclopedia, 24 Mar. 2011. Web. 3 Apr. 2011.

"History of American newspapers." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The

Free Encyclopedia, 2 Apr. 2011. Web. 4 Apr. 2011.

Kennedy, David M., Lizabeth Cohen, Thomas Bailey, and Mel Piehl. The Brief

American Pageant. 6th ed. Vol. 1. Belmont, California: Wadsworth, 2003. Print.

“Newspapers in the 18th Century.” History of the mass media in the United States: An

Encyclopedia. Ed. Margaret A. Blanchard. Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn, 1998.

Print.

“Newspapers in the 20th Century.” History of the mass media in the United States: An

Encyclopedia. Ed. Margaret A. Blanchard. Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn, 1998.

Print.

Postman, Neil. Amusing Ourselves to Death. Harrisonburg, Virginia: Viking Penguin

Inc., 1985. Print.

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