These papers tended to be short on facts—there was little “spot news” reporting—and long on opinion. They more closely resembled journals of opinion than daily newspapers. Often scurrilous and inaccurate, they had few qualms about hinting that a certain nameless official was embezzling money or colluding with a foreign power. “Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper,” Jefferson later said. “Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle.”29
