“The failing @nytimes writes false story after false story about me. They don't even call to verify the facts of a story. A Fake News Joke!” (June 28, 2017 5:59am).
It is tweets like this from President Donald Trump that have begun to add a simple phrase into common language, and are causing severe distrust in the media. It has seemed, at times, that the media has incorrectly reported a few stories about his candidacy and presidency, most notably the pre-election numbers of 2016 (though this could arguably be due to other reasons).
My goal, however, is not to write an opinion on the falsehood of the media, but to discuss the history of “fake news” in America. Is this a modern phenomenon that has evolved from some journalists’ hysterical hatred for President Trump? Or is this a practice that predates the modern era, heralding back to the beginnings of the press in America? I argue that the modern concept of “fake news” is something that has existed since the very establishment of journalism in America.
While the first newspaper publication started in the colonies in 1690 with the creation of the “Publick Occurrences Both Foreign and Domestick” in Boston, journalism as we know it today would not spring into action until the British began to enthusiastically tax the colonies. It was then that there was a massive increase in the number of newspaper publications throughout the colonies, all of which began discussing their hatred of the British.
But how accurate were these early American publications? On March 5th, 1770, violence erupted between the colonists and a small British garrison on the streets of Boston, killing five. Known today as the Boston Massacre, the Sons of Liberty made quick work of this event, molding and publishing it into a PR work of art that would ultimately lead to the revolution itself.
The term “massacre” in the minds of colonists in the 18th century may have reminded them of the Massacre of Glencoe, in which government soldiers in Scotland opened fired on rival clansmen, killing thirty-eight and injuring many more. “Massacre” would have also triggered thoughts of the Irish revolution in 1641, which saw massacres killing upwards of 12,000.
In the case of the colonists, they had been abusing and harassing a lone British guard for the sake of pure hatred, and when he had decided to defend himself by shoving a colonist aside with the butt of his rifle, he faced clubbing, beating, and taunting from an angry mob of colonists. As reinforcements arrived, someone in the crowd would yell “fire,” sparking soldiers to engage the mob. This led to Paul Revere’s famous sketch depicting callous British soldiers firing on an innocent crowd of Americans (not including clubs, picks, or any sort of weaponry, of course). By the time the soldiers were found innocent and the truth revealed that it was an accident, the message of “massacre” had already made its way around the colonies, drumming up further support for independence. Was this “fake news” in 1770?
In an 1807 letter to a student enquiring about how to start a newspaper, Thomas Jefferson would write, “Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle.” Jefferson continued that, “the man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them” (This sounds like something I’ve read on twitter recently).
While Jefferson was describing the mudslingers from his presidential campaign, he too was also a part of the “fake news” apparatus. When he ran against John Adams in 1800, he hired a “hatchet man” named James Callendar who was to travel and campaign for him (since at this point, presidential candidates did not travel to campaign; both Jefferson and Adams primarily stayed at their homes).
Callendar began to whip up falsities, such as claims that Adams desperately wanted to attack France, which by no means was anything close to true, but voters bought it, and Jefferson won the election. “Fake news” would not end here, however.
When the USS Maine blew up in Havana harbor in February of 1898, three newspaper teams sent their correspondents to investigate. William Randolph Hearst, in charge of The New York Journal, published a piece that demanded war, and made it quite clear that it was the Spanish who blew it up. On the illustration that appeared in the article, a mine was intentionally sketched below the ship. On the other hand, Joseph Pulitzer’s World published a so-called “suppressed cable” from the Maine’s captain to Navy Secretary John D. Long in which the captain stated that the explosion was not accidental. However, this was a fake, and such a telegram was never sent. With all the pressure from Hearst’s Journal and Pulitzer’s World, Americans remembered the Maine, and the United States would declare war on Spain.
Fake news has even spread into the 20th century with mal-reports by newspapers on the supposed hysteria of the War of the Worlds radio hoax. There are many more instances of such fake reporting, but I will have to leave you to research this on your own for the sake of brevity.
Needless to say, propaganda, yellow journalism, or “fake news” is something that clearly has existed throughout the history of our nation. So while President Trump claims that the falseness of the media today is unprecedented, it is quite clear that history says otherwise. Fake news is not new, and it is very much a part of our journalistic story as a nation.
