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Infamous Scribblers: The Founding Fathers and the Rowdy Beginnings of American Journalism

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Few things can ignite a more heated debate these days than when the subject of "the media" is introduced into polite conversation. People on the left and right fault contemporary journalism for (a) giving the Bush administration a free ride, or (b) extreme bias against all things Bush and Republican.

Charges of media bias and the controversy over good vs. bad journalism are older than the nation, literally. Veteran journalist Eric Burns has written about the notorious founding fathers of journalism in a highly readable, outrageous and frequently hilarious book called "Infamous Scribblers: The Founding Fathers and the Rowdy Beginnings of American Journalism."

Here, a disclaimer may be warranted. Burns hosts "Fox News Watch" on Fox News Channel (Saturdays at 6:30 p.m. ET), a program on which I appear as a panelist. Nevertheless, I am writing about his book without his encouragement, without remuneration and without even the promise of more airtime.


"Infamous Scribblers" is a line taken from the pen of George Washington, who responded to the disdain some in the press and politics had for him with disdain of his own. Schoolchildren are taught many things about some of our Founding Fathers, but little about what their journalistic tormentors said about them. Burns' book wonderfully completes the record.

The National Gazette was so afraid President George Washington would become a monarch that it took the slightest occasion, including Washington's 61st birthday party, to warn of impending doom to the newly born republic. Its editor, Philip Freneau (a college classmate of James Madison at Princeton), wrote, "Who will deny that the celebrating of birth days is not a striking feature of royalty? We hear of no such thing during the republic of Rome ..."

Another paper of the time likened the birthday observance to a "Political Christmas" and suggested the event was an attempt to rank "Washington with Jesus Christ."

In Colonial journalism, prominent men like Alexander Hamilton would use numerous pseudonyms to comment on, criticize and attack political opponents. Editors, such as they were in those days, saw nothing wrong with the practice and, in fact, encouraged it. The most outrageous and inaccurate items were printed in newspapers with no fact-checking and little sense of responsibility for the damage to career and reputation they might cause.

Burns writes of the Gazette of the United States (born on April 15, 1789, a month after the Constitution took effect) that its editor, John Fenno, was an ardent supporter of the federalism represented by Washington and Hamilton. Fenno's newspaper served as a counterweight to the republican slant of the National Gazette. Burns sums up Fenno's journalistic philosophy: "He would cajole his readers, deceive them when necessary, rile them when advisable; he would praise public officials and other newspaper editors who agreed with his positions and drub those who did not, assailing their intelligence, their character, their patriotism; and he would publish the records of legislative proceedings that advanced the federalist agenda while either ignoring or deriding or sometimes even falsifying documents to the contrary."

Such things were to be found on the "news" pages, not the opinion page. Entire newspapers were opinion pages. To have a page designated "opinion" would have been redundant.

The 1790s were, according to historian John Ferling, "one of America's most passionate decades." The nation's journalism, notes Burns, could not help but reflect the heat.

One paper, named the Aurora, engaged in what Burns describes as "journalistic savagery ... not caring about accuracy or even the illusion of it." In 1795, the Aurora published a series of letters George Washington supposedly wrote while encamped at Valley Forge during the winter of 1777 and 1778. The letters "portrayed Washington as a lukewarm patriot at best, a loyal subject of George III at worst, and at least a skeptic concerning independence."

It would have been a great story if true, but Washington wrote no such letters. That didn't bother Benjamin Franklin Bache (Ben Franklin's grandson and the owner of the Aurora), who was not about to retract something that served his anti-Washington political ends.

They're all in the book - people you studied in school - and so are their many detractors. After reading "Infamous Scribblers" you will be amazed at how far journalism has progressed (or not) and even more amazed at how our Founders overcame the inaccurate and biased attacks from the "newspapers" and pamphlets of their day to achieve greatness and a deserved place in our history books and our hearts.

Copyright 2006 Tribune Media Services

You have had it up to here with newspapers and news broadcasts that are partisan and shrill. You are sick of the media focusing on scandal or even making up scandals. You can't stand the prospect of hearing from another pundit who calls for the death of her political opponents. You wish that newspapers would go back to the good old days of objectivity and impartial promotion of the public interest, perhaps when Freedom of the Press was a new concept and was being flaunted with energy and joy. Don't be too sure. In _Infamous Scribblers: The Founding Fathers and the Rowdy Beginnings of American Journalism_ (PublicAffairs), Eric Burns (who works for Fox News!) has given a funny and thoughtful look at our nation's initial press. The title of the book comes from a phrase George Washington, who had more than his share of problems with the papers, used to describe his newsprint detractors. We may have come a long way in the technologies we use for our media, but the problems here of lies, leaks, and libel will sound familiar to modern readers.

One excuse the newspapers had then that they do not have now is that they were new. Neither Europe nor the colonies had a tradition of an impartial press, so the press had to invent itself. The first newspaper was closed because the publisher was obnoxious and refused to get a license. The second was a toadying journal that printed what the authorities wanted. Ben Franklin's elder brother was the first crusading journalist, but took up a malicious crusade against smallpox inoculations. Founding father Sam Adams edited the _Boston Gazette_ and had no interest in printing the truth, unless the truth happened to promote American liberty. If a false story about British troops raping helpless American women incited violent protests against the redcoats, Sam Adams didn't mind. As Burns writes, "History has vindicated Adams's political ends; it cannot justify his journalistic means." The exaggeration and outright lying was continued by others during the time of the writing of the Constitution and during the initial decades of the new nation. The Federalists (in favor of strong central government) and the opposing Republicans had their pet journals, and even arranged for the editors to be on the federal payroll when they could.

Burns's lively history is a reminder of how venerable is the tradition of parties loving a press that agrees with them and excoriating the press that disagrees. It also goes a long way to making the gigantic marble statues that we think of as our Founding Fathers into human figures motivated at least in part by lust, vanity, and eagerness for power. The vehemence and outright deceitfulness that they could use when deploying the press is remarkable. It is also worth being reminded that for all the good that came from our founding, those involved in it were often unsure about what they were doing, and if sure, were often sure of what proved to be error or misjudgment. Burns commends the nation for coming to admire the strengths of the founders, but not emulating their style of journalism. Perhaps the papers of two hundred years ago were more extreme in their bluster, malevolence, and inattention to fact, but those who look at current cable news, blogging, or even supermarket tabloids will find that the reformation has not been total.

Infamous Scribblers: The Founding Fathers and the Rowdy Beginnings of American Journalism is the eye-popping true story of how raucous and undisciplined American journalism once was. Feuds, partisanship, and outright lies often colored journalism of the era. Some founding fathers, such as Ben Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, and Sam Adams, were leading journalists, others, such as George Washington and John Adams, passionately disdained journalists; and Thomas Jefferson was a skillful manipulator of journalists. Infamous Scribblers is divided into three sections: "The Role of Authority", "The Approach of War", and "The Tumult of Peace", all tracing the contentious relationship between the founding fathers and journalism throughout the birth of America. Highly recommended for American history shelves, and an absolute "must-have" for public and college libraries.

The opening sentence says it all.

"It was the best of times; it was the worst of journalism." It was an era that spawned the finest minds our country has ever seen drawn into public service. It was an era that spawned some our country's most raucous journalists.

Ben Franklin, Alexander Hamilton and Sam Adams were accomplished journalists. George Washington and John Adams detested journalists. Thomas Jefferson was a skilled manipulator of journalists.

Franklin's brother, James, was one of the first muckrakers. Thomas Paine was thought-provoking, high-minded and persuasive. James Callender was a hatchet man. The journalists of the era were often partisan, scandalous and sensational. They were often stirring, passionate and brilliant.

Together they aired the issues that caused the now United States to declare its independence and chart a course that lead to its position in the world today. Eric Burns, host of Fox News Channel's "Fox News Watch" relates the story.

This tale is essential to understanding the press' role in our society today.

"Infamous Scribblers" was a fantastic read. Newspapers haven't changed much since colonial times. the best part of the book was the historical facts brought up, and the infighting of politicians and printers, among themselves and with each other. It brought out things about our founding fathers that aren't in your regular history books. There is a very great likeness of events and people then and now, The one big difference today is newspapers don't attack like they did then. They didn't hold back much at all and would keep it up and not backdown. Give it a try I think you will enjoy it....Ken

We all know that our media is biased. But on the whole the left thinks that it is biased in favor of the right. The right is absolutely certain that it is biased in favor of the left. And some like the ones you see at the checkout stand in the supermarket are biased against the truth, any truth.

What this book brings to the fore is that this is not new. The media, such as it was, of the time had just about as much fun with politicians dallying in the wrong bedroom as did the media with Bill Clinton. The owners of the media made little effort to hide their bias for or against anyone.

Washington, for instance is usually treated almost saintly by the people of today. One article said, 'the American nation has been deceived by Washington.' If you substituted the word 'Clinton' or 'Bush' for the word 'Washington' this could well be a recent or one of today's articles.

This is a book that reminds us that there is little new under the sun, at least so far as journalism and politicians go. It's a delightful and amusing read.

To a great degree, the Founding Fathers were the "Infamous Scribblers." Only George Washington, writes Eric Burns probably never wrote a line intended for newspaper publication.

Washington was hard-used by the Republican press, especially the Aurora, which was secretly managed by Thomas Jefferson, who was in Washington's Cabinet. But John Adams, alsd hard-used by the press when he was president, had been a scribbler himself in early years. Not usually strident, he was, however, hard on King George and his ministers. Alexander Hamilton had his own rag, the ;Gazette of the United States, that he used to run down his colleague in the Cabinet, Jefferson. But he was also the principal author of the Federalist Papers, still the supreme ornament of American newspapering. The other authors of The Federalist were James Madison and John Jay, on opposite sides once the Constitution was ratified.

Obviously, both the politics and the journalism of the Revolutionary and early national period were complex and contradictory, and no one -- except possibly Washington -- was in a position to gripe very sincerely about the standards and ethics of the press.

It is Eric Burns' theme that the first American papers were scurrilous, unfairly partisan, unconcerned with accuracy. All this is true and has long been a commonplace of histories about the times, yet it was also not true.

The first 150 pages of his book, which give a summary history of the development of the colonial periodical press, are practically genteel. Later, yes, the partisan faults came to the fore, but it was never true that editors were indifferent to accuracy.

The confusion comes because there were not "editorial" and "news" and "advertisement" sections.Everything was jumbled together, and of course editors cared whether their reports of shipping news and prices current in other colonies were believable.

It is true that the language of the opinion pieces was unrestrained, according to 20th century ideas, but it would be difficult to argue that the partisanship was rawer than what appeared in the Chicago Tribune or PM in the `40s.

Furthermore, and this is beyond Burns's time frame, the completely bareknuckled style never went out of fashion in American newspapers. What happened was that commercial dailies (dailies hardly existed in the period covered by Burns) began to appeal, for purely business reasons, to as broad a readership as possible, and so stopped putting opinions in news stories. The old style continued in the frankly partison periodicals, of which there have been tens of thousands, mostly weeklies or monthlies, rather than dailies, and mostly devoid of any attempt to provide general news. A few, like William Lloyd Garrison's Liberator, were influential. Most like various Ku Klux Klan papers such as the Fiery Cross were seldom seen, much less read, by most people.
Burns's volume is a flavorful sampling, not a detailed analysis, of the 18th century papers. In many cases, he quotes a line or a paragraph without even saying what paper it was in.

Opinionated himself, he declares what the underlying significance of various press ambuscades and battles was, and this is usually plausible. He chooses to call a halt with the death of Hamilton, which in many ways also marked the end of the federalist press, although it was on the way out anyway. The great change in the American press came in the 1790s, which started out with most papers federalist and ended with most republican.

The federalist press committed suicide, along with the feferalist faction, by supporting the SeditionAct, a repudiation of American political views that was too much for most people to swallow. The big money was still federalist, but big money has never supported a truly unpopular journalism in America the way it has in Europe. Not for long, anyway.

I hesitated a before picking up this book. Burns is the host for Fox News Watch, and although I have never seen his show, what I have seen of Fox is not worth anyone's time, except pathologists. But I did read it, and Burns is free of Foxiness.

You have to wonder whether he chose the topic as a kind of expiation for keeping the company he does; and if that is not it, you have to wonder whether conversation stops when Eric Burns walks into the Fox lunchroom.

Eric Burns provides a brilliant look at the major newspapers of this country, starting with the first in the colonies from the early 18th century, onward through about 1804. Somehow he turns this ostensibly boring topic into a fun, quick, and lively read. I highly recommend it.

Covering the lies and slanders in US journalism from colonial times through the revolution and Federalist time periods, this book delivers an overview of the major events during these segments of US history. There is little background delivered, just a series of vignettes as Burns chronologically delivers news coverage of the important events of the time.

Given the invective inherent in the journalism of the time, I expected a more vibrant work than Mr. Burns provides. For all of our history up to the War of 1812, the US was an untested experiment, and the population split into decidedly rancorous, polar opposite factions, that sometimes violently disagreed with each other. This was when our 2 party system of government was formed and each faction had their own journals, gazettes and newspapers which behaved quite atrociously.

Somehow Eric Burns delivers coverage of the events with little or no passion. The result is a remarkably flat read that is quite difficult to get through. This book does sparkle at certain points, particularly with reference to Thomas Jefferson. Burns reveals Jefferson as something of a rogue, a manipulator of people, facts and freedoms. These pages were quite interesting as Burns delivers a Jefferson who is quite human. But the views of the rest of the Founding Fathers are traditional, and, as a result, repetitious of what many, many others have already written.

Working as he does, from actual newspaper accounts at the time, replete with the aforementioned published lies and slander, I had hoped he would deliver views of Adams, Morris, Livingston, Washington, Franklin, et al., with more of what he provided for Jefferson: Realism. This was pretty juicy stuff, but no, he simply quotes from 30-40 journals with little or no analysis. The result is a very flat read, one that the author himself does not participate in and one that is repetitious of so many others that it is difficult to stay with.

The cover claims the author as connected with Fox News and after I received it, I feared a right-wing diatribe. Au contraire. He is a social historian and the stories are a lot of fun.