These Truths: A History of the United States

by Jill Lepore

Newspapers in the early republic weren’t incidentally or inadvertently partisan; they were entirely and enthusiastically partisan. They weren’t especially interested in establishing facts; they were interested in staging a battle of opinions. “Professions of impartiality I shall make none,” wrote a Federalist printer. “They are always useless, and are besides perfect nonsense.”92 The printer of the Connecticut Bee promised to publish news Of turns of fortune, changes in the state, The fall of fav’rites, projects of the great, Of old mismanagements, taxations new, All neither wholly false, nor wholly true.93 Once much maligned as destructive of public life, parties, driven by newspapers, became its machinery. “The engine,” said Jefferson, “is the press.”