[Regular readers of Silverback Digest know that I spend too many of my waking hours contemplating, and coming to no conclusion, about the true nature and role of publishing in our modern world. This is more of same. To publish is to “make information public.” But, in a time of “alternative facts,” “fake news,” QAnon, Jeff Bezos owning the Washington Post, all major television networks being owned by entertainment companies, and Elon Musk buying Twitter, what is “information?” Maybe we can be enlightened by one of the Founding Fathers, the primary author of The Declaration of Independence, who slept with his slave while riding out the Revolution sipping wine in France. As the character depicting him in Hamilton, the musical “What’d I Miss?” Color me (still) confused, (still) pondering. SBS SM]
A Letter to the Editor
Thomas Jefferson on Newspapers and its optimum organization, 1807
mzuo letters May 3, 2022 3 Minutes
1st. Truths. 2d. Probabilities. 3d. Possibilities. 4th. Lies.
“To your request of my opinion of the manner in which a newspaper should be conducted so as to be most useful, I should answer ‘by restraining it to true facts & sound principles only.’ Yet I fear such a paper would find few subscribers. It is a melancholy truth that a suppression of the press could not more compleatly deprive the nation of it’s benefits, than is done by it’s abandoned prostitution to falsehood.
Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle. The real extent of this state of misinformation is known only to those who are in situations to confront facts within their knolege with the lies of the day.
I really look with commiseration over the great body of my fellow citizens, who, reading newspapers, live & die in the belief that they have known something of what has been passing in the world in their time: whereas the accounts they have read in newspapers are just as true a history of any other period of the world as of the present, except that the real names of the day are affixed to their fables.
General facts may indeed be collected from them, such as that Europe is now at war, that Bonaparte has been a successful warrior, that he has subjected a great portion of Europe to his will, but no details can be relied on. I will add that the man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them; inasmuch as he who knows nothing is nearer to truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods & errors. He who reads nothing will still learn the great facts, and the details are all false.
Perhaps an editor might begin a reformation in some such way as this. divide his paper into 4. chapters, heading the 1st. Truths. 2d. Probabilities. 3d. Possibilities. 4th. Lies. the 1st. chapter would be very short, as it would contain little more than authentic papers, and information from such sources as the editor would be willing to risk his own reputation for their truth. the 2d. would contain what, from a mature consideration of all circumstances, his judgment should conclude to be probably true. this however should rather contain too little than too much. the 3d. & 4th. should be professedly for those readers who would rather have lies for their money than the blank paper they would occupy.
Such an editor too would have to set his face against the demoralising practice of feeding the public mind habitually on slander, & the depravity of taste which this nauseous aliment induces. defamation is becoming a necessary of life: insomuch that a dish of tea, in the morning or evening, cannot be digested without this stimulant. even those who do not believe these abominations, still read them with complacence to their auditors, and, instead of the abhorrence & indignation which should fill a virtuous mind, betray a secret pleasure in the possibility that some may believe them, tho they do not themselves. it seems to escape them that it is not he who prints, but he who pays for printing a slander, who is it’s real author.
These thoughts on the subjects of your letter are hazarded at your request. repeated instances of the publication of what has not been intended for the public eye, and the malignity with which political enemies torture every sentence from me into meanings imagined by their own wickedness only, justify my expressing a sollicitude that this hasty communication may in no way be permitted to find it’s way into the public papers. not fearing these political bull-dogs, I yet avoid putting myself in the way of being baited by them, and do not wish to volunteer away that portion of tranquility which a firm execution of my duties will permit me to enjoy.
I tender you my salutations & best wishes for your success.
– Thomas Jefferson, 1807
Excerpt from letter to John Norvell, 11 June 1807: https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/99-01-02-5737