ABSTRACT

Thomas Jefferson had strong and ambivalent feelings about the press, as his quoted words indicate: “Newspapers serve to carry off noxious vapors and smoke” (cited in Rafferty, 1975, p. 85), and later, “Nothing can be believed which is seen in a newspaper” (cited in Rafferty, 1975, p. 85). In addition, “The man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them, inasmuch as he who knows nothing is nearer the truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors” (cited in Rafferty, 1975, p. 26) And yet, Jefferson, our most intellectual of presidents also wrote these words: “When the press is free and every man able to read, all is safe” (cited in Rafferty, 1975, p. 61), and “No government ought to be without censors; and where the press is free none ever will” (cited in Rafferty, 1975, p. 61); “The press is the best instrument for enlightening the mind of man, and improving him as a rational, moral, and social being” (cited in Rafferty, 1975, p. 61).