Mass media and American politics

Mass media and American politics covers the role of newspapers, magazines, radio, television, and social media from the colonial era to the present.

The first newspapers appeared in major port cities such as Philadelphia, New York, Boston, and Charleston in order to provide merchants with the latest trade news. They typically copied any news that was received from other newspapers, or from the London press. The editors discovered they could criticize the local governor and gain a bigger audience; the governor discovered he could shut down the newspapers. The most dramatic confrontation came in New York in 1734, where the governor brought John Peter Zenger to trial for criminal libel after his paper published some satirical attacks. Zenger's lawyers argued that truth was a defense against libel and the jury acquitted Zenger, who became the iconic American hero for freedom of the press. The result was an emerging tension between the media and the government. Literacy was widespread in America, with over half of the white men able to read. The illiterates often could hear newspapers read aloud at local taverns. By the mid-1760s, there were 24 weekly newspapers in the 13 colonies (only New Jersey was lacking one), and the satirical attack on government became common practice in American newspapers. The French and Indian war (1757–63) was the featured topic of many newspaper stories, giving the colonials a broader view of American affairs. Benjamin Franklin, already famous as a printer in Philadelphia published one of the first editorial cartoons "Join, or Die" calling on the colonies to join together to defeat the French. By reprinting news originating in other papers, colonial printers created a private network for evaluating and disseminating news for the whole colonial world. Franklin took the lead, and eventually had two dozen newspapers in his network. The network played a major role in organizing opposition to the Stamp Act, and in organizing and embolding the Patriots in the 1770s.

Colonial newspaper networks played a major role in fomenting the American Revolution, starting with their attack on the Stamp Act of 1765. They provided essential news of what was happening locally and another colonies, and they provided the arguments used by the patriots, to Voice their grievances such as "No taxation without representation!" The newspapers also printed and sold pamphlets, such as the phenomenally successful Common Sense (1776), which destroyed the king's prestige and jelled Patriot opinion overnight in favor of independence. Neutrality became impossible, and the few Loyalist newspapers were hounded and ceased publication when the war began. However the British controlled important cities for varying periods of time, including New York City, 1776 to 1783. They sponsored a Loyalist press that vanished in 1783.

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