Press Freedom Quotes
Two decades later Jefferson, after his Presidency, had developed a different attitude towards the press. See {585116}.
Note the language used to describe the American government at the time. To the founders, it was an EXPERIMENT. Nothing like that had ever been tried before. And none of them were sure it would work. After defeating the British, they could have chosen for their new independent nation any one of dozens of well-established forms of government. But these were all flawed. So they risked the new nation on a form that had little or no precedent and might or might not survive. Centuries later many national leaders and legislators were fearful to try anything that they were not highly certain would be effective. Experiments were rare until there were crises so great that none of the orthodox solutions would be sufficient, and even then the innovators were criticized such as with Lincoln and Franklin Delano Roosevelt. They were candid enough to admit that they were experimenting. FDR in particular announced experimentation as a policy with rapid change for the experiments that did not work out of which there were several.
Samuel Langhorne Clemens, 1835-1910. Twain was a much sought after public speaker in an era before TV and radio. Some speeches like this he delivered many times in many places.
Vladimir Lenin. Lenin was echoing criticisms that were made the world over and even by some in the United States. However, his solution to have the press controlled by the ruling party just changed the cast of characters who were propagandizing and distorting the truth. Lenin was not able to offer a better solution nor were others. However, with enough affluence the capitalist society produced enough different publishers all competing that one did not dominate public opinion. With technology of TV and the Internet, the bar to entry is so small that almost anyone can be a publisher and find an interested market. In a way technology has solved much of the problem for capitalistic and totalitarian societies alike. In the latter, even censorship is not easy or feasible on a large scale.
Note how the second paragraph nullifies the first of the government declares an emergency. This is a trick that is very common in constitutions.
