ABSTRACT
By the 1760s, two fifty years had passed since Martin Luther first showed the potential power of journalism. Yet, in reporting of both crime and political news, news ballads and newspapers of the 1780s and 1790s continued the corruption story emphasis, with its good news conclusion. The first major test of newly established press freedom in America grew out of the French Revolution. In revolutionary France journalism rapidly arrogated to itself the Church's former role as the propagator of values, models, and symbols for society at large. Faith that individual change could occur through governmental action, if vast power were put in the right hands, underlies the oppression story. Critics of the press revived the common mid-century distinction between liberty and license. Thus ended the first attempt to bring to American journalism the oppression story faith that if man's environment were changed through social revolution, man himself would change.
