Putting Jefferson's Quote On Newspapers Into Context

from the funny-how-that-works dept

Fri, Apr 24th 2009 8:10am — Mike Masnick

Earlier this year, we took on why journalists who were quoting Thomas Jefferson's famous line: "were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate to prefer the latter" were missing the point, noting that he really meant journalism not newspapers -- and journalism isn't going away at all. However, Jay Rosen points out that the quote is actually out of context. The full Jefferson quote even more clearly makes the point that it's not physical newspapers, he's concerned about:

"The basis of our governments being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter. But I should mean that every man should receive those papers and be capable of reading them." -- Thomas Jefferson

From that quote, it seems likely that Jefferson would be quite a fan of the web and the fact that news on the web was free and widely available -- contrary to the point made by most old school news folks quoting it.

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Filed Under: context, journalism, newspapers, quotes, thomas jefferson

11 Comments

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Tgeigs, 24 Apr 2009 @ 8:16am

Also
"were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter"

I think it's even MORE ironic that the newspapers quoting Tommy Jeff would probably receive a hearty colonial bitch slap for being IN BED with government. Jefferson's quote assumes the two are separate and not working concert, something that isn't often occuring in physical newspapers today.
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Z, 24 Apr 2009 @ 8:50am

"But I should mean that every man should receive those papers and be capable of reading them."

And education.
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Luís Carvalho, 24 Apr 2009 @ 8:50am

From that quote only, without really knowing much more from the man itself, I can imagine he would be a p2per fanatic. Also, a great blogger.

Please correct me if I'm wrong.
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No one, 24 Apr 2009 @ 8:53am

New favorite saying
"hearty colonial bitch slap" - Best cross generational imagery ever.
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Tgeigs, 24 Apr 2009 @ 9:08am

Re: New favorite saying
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:Lobo Santo, 24 Apr 2009 @ 9:12am

Quotes out of context
Taking things out of context is a media tradition going back years! Why stop using such an effective technique now?
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Anonymous Coward, 24 Apr 2009 @ 10:24am

Re:
p2per, one can't really say. But blogger, yes. He wrote thousands of letters, they are our best record of him. So it wouldn't be a stretch to say that today instead of letters he might have just posted to a blog.
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batch, 24 Apr 2009 @ 3:22pm

Jefferson for the win
The newspaper people ought to go study the Houston Chronicle. According to the Modern Marvels episode Retro Tech, the Houston Chronicle embraced the internet in the 90's. Whenever that episode was recorded they stated that their physical newspaper circulation is only 500,000. On the other hand, their website, gets 80million visits a month.

Now, unless all that has changed drastically or was in-accurate to begin with, I'd say they can be considered a success story.

I can't link an online version of the show, although a google search turns up torrents and other possible places to view it.
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deworde, 26 Apr 2009 @ 1:23am

RE: Jefferson for the win
@batch
The problem is, how do those 80 million visits translate into money? If you mistake hits for profit, you're going to go bust.
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Gary Davis, 22 Dec 2016 @ 9:35am

Jefferson on newspapers
I disagree. First, Jefferson didn't live to see the internet. Second, he would have been appalled by how the internet has been used by the rabble to devalue truth and the search for facts. Newspapers can be held to account more easily than Breitbart. As long as we're engaging in contrafactuals let me suggest that Jefferson would be appalled by Trump and the Trumpsters disregard for truth.
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Carol Petersen, 18 Feb 2017 @ 6:59am

Internet is not journalism
The Internet is NOT journalism, in the same way that cutting paper Valentine's hearts is not the equivalent of being a cardiac surgeon. There are journalistic standards. There are journalistic ethics. And while you might be critical of some people who call themselves journalists who violate those, anonymous bloggers sitting behind a computer screen expressing unsubstantiated opinion are as far from "journalists" as possible.
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