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Freedom of the Press
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A press that is free to
investigate and criticize the government is absolutely essential in a nation that
practices self-government and is therefore dependent on an educated and enlightened
citizenry. On the other hand, newspapers too often take advantage of their freedom and
publish lies and scurrilous gossip that could only deceive and mislead the people.
Jefferson himself suffered greatly under the latter kind of press during his presidency.
But he was a great believer in the ultimate triumph of truth in the free marketplace of
ideas, and looked to that for his final vindication.
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"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 to Edward Carrington, 1787. ME 6:57
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"The press [is] the only
tocsin of a nation. [When it] is completely silenced... all means of a general effort
[are] taken away." --Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Cooper, Nov 29, 1802. (*) ME 10:341
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"The only security of all is
in a free press. The force of public opinion cannot be resisted when permitted freely to
be expressed. The agitation it produces must be submitted to. It is necessary, to keep the
waters pure." --Thomas Jefferson to Lafayette, 1823. ME 15:491
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"The functionaries of every
government have propensities to command at will the liberty and property of their
constituents. There is no safe deposit for these but with the people themselves, nor can
they be safe with them without information. Where the press is free, and every man able to
read, all is safe." --Thomas Jefferson to Charles Yancey, 1816. ME 14:384
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"The most effectual engines
for [pacifying a nation] are the public papers... [A despotic] government always [keeps] a
kind of standing army of newswriters who, without any regard to truth or to what should be
like truth, [invent] and put into the papers whatever might serve the ministers. This
suffices with the mass of the people who have no means of distinguishing the false from
the true paragraphs of a newspaper." --Thomas Jefferson to G. K. van Hogendorp, Oct.
13, 1785. (*) ME 5:181, Papers 8:632
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"Our liberty cannot be
guarded but by the freedom of the press, nor that be limited without danger of losing
it." --Thomas Jefferson to John Jay, 1786.
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"I am... for freedom of the
press, and against all violations of the Constitution to silence by force and not by
reason the complaints or criticisms, just or unjust, of our citizens against the conduct
of their agents." --Thomas Jefferson to Elbridge Gerry, 1799. ME 10:78
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"The art of printing secures
us against the retrogradation of reason and information." --Thomas Jefferson to
Pierre Paganel, 1811. ME 13:37
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"The light which has been
shed on mankind by the art of printing has eminently changed the condition of the world...
And while printing is preserved, it can no more recede than the sun return on his
course." --Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, 1823. ME 15:465
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"The art of printing alone
and the vast dissemination of books will maintain the mind where it is and raise the
conquering ruffians to the level of the conquered instead of degrading these to that of
their conquerors." --Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, 1821. ME 15:334
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"[The] literati [of Europe
are] half a dozen years before us. Books, really good, acquire just reputation in that
time, and so become known to us and communicate to us all their advances in knowledge. Is
not this delay compensated by our being placed out of the reach of that swarm of
nonsensical publications which issues daily from a thousand presses and perishes almost in
issuing?" --Thomas Jefferson to Charles Bellini, 1785. ME 5:153, Papers 8:569
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"I cannot live without
books." --Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, 1815. ME 14:301
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"To preserve the freedom of
the human mind... and freedom of the press, every spirit should be ready to devote itself
to martyrdom; for as long as we may think as we will and speak as we think, the condition
of man will proceed in improvement." Thomas Jefferson to William Green Munford, 1799.
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"No experiment can be more
interesting than that we are now trying, and which we trust will end in establishing the
fact, that man may be governed by reason and truth. Our first object should therefore be,
to leave open to him all the avenues to truth. The most effectual hitherto found, is the
freedom of the press. It is, therefore, the first shut up by those who fear the
investigation of their actions." --Thomas Jefferson to John Tyler, 1804. ME 11:33
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"Weighing all probabilities
of expense as well as of income, there is reasonable ground of confidence that we may now
safely dispense with... the postage on newspapers... to facilitate the progress of
information." --Thomas Jefferson: 1st Annual Message, 1801. ME 3:331
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"No government ought to be
without censors, and where the press is free, no one ever will. If virtuous, it need not
fear the fair operation of attack and defence. Nature has given to man no other means of
sifting out the truth whether in religion, law or politics. I think it as honorable to the
government neither to know nor notice its sycophants or censors, as it would be
undignified and criminal to pamper the former and persecute the latter." --Thomas
Jefferson to George Washington, 1792. ME 8:406
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"This formidable censor of
the public functionaries, by arraigning them at the tribunal of public opinion, produces
reform peaceably, which must otherwise be done by revolution. It is also the best
instrument for enlightening the mind of man and improving him as a rational, moral, and
social being." --Thomas Jefferson to A. Coray, 1823. ME 15:489
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"I think an editor should be
independent, that is, of personal influence, and not be moved from his opinions on the
mere authority of any individual. But, with respect to the general opinion of the
political section with which he habitually accords, his duty seems very like that of a
member of Congress. Some of these indeed think that independence requires them to follow
always their own opinion, without respect for that of others. This has never been my
opinion, nor my practice, when I have been of that or any other body. Differing on a
particular question from those whom I knew to be of the same political principles with
myself, and with whom I generally thought and acted, a consciousness of the fallibility of
the human mind, and of my own in particular, with a respect for the accumulated judgment
of my friends, has induced me to suspect erroneous impressions in myself, to suppose my
own opinion wrong, and to act with them on theirs." --Thomas Jefferson to William
Duane, 1811. ME 13:49
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"To demand the censors of
public measures to be given up for punishment is to renew the demand of the wolves in the
fable, that the sheep should give up their dogs as hostages of the peace and confidence
established between them." --Thomas Jefferson to William Branch Giles, 1794.
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Responsibility to the People |
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"Our citizens may be
deceived for awhile, and have been deceived; but as long as the presses can be protected,
we may trust to them for light." --Thomas Jefferson to Archibald Stuart. 1799.
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"I am persuaded that the
good sense of the people will always be found to be the best army. They may be led astray
for a moment, but will soon correct themselves. The people are the only censors of their
governors, and even their errors will tend to keep these to the true principles of their
institution. To punish these errors too severely would be to suppress the only safeguard
of the public liberty. The way to prevent these irregular interpositions of the people is
to give them full information of their affairs through the channel of the public papers,
and to contrive that those papers should penetrate the whole mass of the people."
--Thomas Jefferson to Edward Carrington, 1787.
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"Cherish... the spirit of
our people, and keep alive their attention. Do not be too severe upon their errors, but
reclaim them by enlightening them." --Thomas Jefferson to Edward Carrington, 1787. ME
6:58
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Restrictions on a Free Press |
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"Considering [the] great
importance to the public liberty [of the freedom of the press], and the difficulty of
submitting it to very precise rules, the laws have thought it less mischievous to give
greater scope to its freedom than to the restraint of it." --Thomas Jefferson to the
Spanish Commissioners, 1793. ME 9:165
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"It is so difficult to draw
a clear line of separation between the abuse and the wholesome use of the press, that as
yet we have found it better to trust the public judgment, rather than the magistrate, with
the discrimination between truth and falsehood. And hitherto the public judgment has
performed that office with wonderful correctness." --Thomas Jefferson to M. Pictet,
1803. ME 10:356
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"[This is] a country which
is afraid to read nothing, and which may be trusted with anything, so long as its reason
remains unfettered by law." --Thomas Jefferson to Joseph Milligan, 1816. ME 14:463
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"[If a book were] very
innocent, and one which might be confided to the reason of any man; not likely to be much
read if let alone, but if persecuted, it will be generally read. Every man in the United
States will think it a duty to buy a copy, in vindication of his right to buy and to read
what he pleases." --Thomas Jefferson to N. G. Dufief, 1814. ME 14:128
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"A declaration that the
Federal Government will never restrain the presses from printing anything they please will
not take away the liability of the printers for false facts printed." --Thomas
Jefferson to James Madison, 1788. ME 7:98
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"Printing presses shall be
free except as to false facts published maliciously either to injure the reputation of
another (whether followed by pecuniary damages or not) or to expose him to the punishment
of the law." --Thomas Jefferson: Notes for a Constitution, 1794.
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"Printing presses shall be
subject to no other restraint than liableness to legal prosecution for false facts printed
and published." --Thomas Jefferson: Draft of Virginia Constitution, 1783. ME 2:298,
Papers 6:304
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"Since truth and reason have
maintained their ground against false opinions in league with false facts, the press
confined to truth needs no other legal restraint. The public judgment will correct false
reasonings and opinions on a full hearing of all parties, and no other definite line can
be drawn between the inestimable liberty of the press and its demoralizing licentiousness.
If there be still improprieties which this rule would not restrain, its supplement must be
sought in the censorship of public opinion." --Thomas Jefferson: 2nd Inaugural
Address, 1805. ME 3:381
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Restraints Against Slander |
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"The States... retain to
themselves the right of judging how far the licentiousness of speech and of the press may
be abridged without lessening their useful freedom, and how far those abuses which cannot
be separated from their use should be tolerated rather than the use be destroyed."
--Thomas Jefferson: Draft of Kentucky Resolutions, 1798. ME 17:381
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"The power to [restrain
slander] is fully possessed by the several State Legislatures. It was reserved to them,
and was denied to the General Government, by the Constitution, according to our
construction of it. While we deny that Congress have a right to control the freedom of the
press, we have ever asserted the right of the States, and their exclusive right, to do so.
They have accordingly all of them made provisions for punishing slander which those who
have time and inclination resort to for the vindication of their characters. In general,
the state laws appear to have made the presses responsible for slander as far as is
consistent with their useful freedom. In those states where they do not admit even the
truth of allegations to protect the printer they have gone too far." --Thomas
Jefferson to Abigail Adams, 1804. ME 11:51
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"No inference is here
intended that the laws provided by the State against false and defamatory publications
should not be enforced; he who has time renders a service to public morals and public
tranquility in reforming these abuses by the salutary coercions of the law." --Thomas
Jefferson: 2nd Inaugural Address, 1805. ME 3:381
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"While a full range is
proper for actions by individuals either private or public for slanders affecting them, I
would wish much to see the experiment tried of getting along without public prosecutions
for libels. I believe we can do it. Patience and well-doing instead of punishment, if it
can be found sufficiently efficacious, would be a happy change in the instruments of
government." --Thomas Jefferson to Levi Lincoln, 1802.
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"I deplore... the putrid
state into which our newspapers have passed and the malignity, the vulgarity, and
mendacious spirit of those who write for them... These ordures are rapidly depraving the
public taste and lessening its relish for sound food. As vehicles of information and a
curb on our funtionaries, they have rendered themselves useless by forfeiting all title to
belief... This has, in a great degree, been produced by the violence and malignity of
party spirit." --Thomas Jefferson to Walter Jones, 1814. ME 14:46
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"Our printers raven on the
agonies of their victims, as wolves do on the blood of the lamb." --Thomas Jefferson
to James Monroe, 1811. ME 13:59
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"From forty years'
experience of the wretched guess-work of the newspapers of what is not done in open
daylight, and of their falsehood even as to that, I rarely think them worth reading, and
almost never worth notice." --Thomas Jefferson to James Monroe, 1816. ME 14:430
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"Nothing can now be believed
which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that
polluted vehicle. The real extent of this state of misinformation is known only to those
who are in situations to confront facts within their knowledge with the lies of the
day." --Thomas Jefferson to John Norvell, 1807. ME 11:224
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"As for what is not true,
you will always find abundance in the newspapers." --Thomas Jefferson to Barnabas
Bidwell, 1806. ME 11:118
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"Advertisements... contain
the only truths to be relied on in a newspaper." --Thomas Jefferson to Nathaniel
Macon, 1819. ME 15:179
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"The press is impotent when
it abandons itself to falsehood." --Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Seymour, 1807.
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"A coalition of sentiments
is not for the interest of printers. They, like the clergy, live by the zeal they can
kindle and the schisms they can create. It is contest of opinion in politics as well as
religion which makes us take great interest in them and bestow our money liberally on
those who furnish aliment to our appetite... So the printers can never leave us in a state
of perfect rest and union of opinion. They would be no longer useful and would have to go
to the plough." --Thomas Jefferson to Elbridge Gerry, 1801. ME 10:254
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"These people [i.e., the
printers] think they have a right to everything, however secret or sacred." --Thomas
Jefferson to John Adams, 1815. ME 14:345
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"To divide those by lying
tales whom truths cannot divide, is the hackneyed policy of the gossips of every
society." --Thomas Jefferson to George Clinton, 1803. ME 10:440
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"[We] have seen too much...
of the conduct of the press in countries where it is free, to consider the gazettes as
evidence of the sentiments of any part of the government; [we] have seen them bestow on
the government itself, in all its parts, its full share of inculpation." --Thomas
Jefferson to George Hammond, 1792. ME 8:300
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"Nations, like individuals,
wish to enjoy a fair reputation. It is therefore desirable for us that the slanders on our
country, disseminated by hired or prejudiced travellers, should be corrected."
--Thomas Jefferson to James Ogilvie, 1811. ME 13:69
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"Our newspapers, for the
most part, present only the caricatures of disaffected minds. Indeed, the abuses of the
freedom of the press here have been carried to a length never before known or borne by any
civilized nation." --Thomas Jefferson to M. Pictet, 1803. ME 10:357
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"For the present, lying and
scribbling must be free to those mean enough to deal in them, and in the dark."
--Thomas Jefferson to Edmund Randolph, 1792. ME 8:411
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"Our people, merely for want
of intelligence which they may rely on, are become lethargic and insensible of the state
they are in." --Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, 1777. ME 4:288, Papers 2:19
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"The materials now bearing
on the public mind will infallibly restore it to its republican soundness... if the
knowledge of facts can only be disseminated among the people." --Thomas Jefferson to
Archibald Stuart, 1799. ME 10:104
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"I really look with
commiseration over the great body of my fellow citizens who, reading newspapers, live and
die in the belief that they have known something of what has been passing in the world in
their time, whereas the accounts they have read in newspapers are just as true a history
of any other period of the world as of the present, except that the real names of the day
are affixed to their fables. General facts may indeed be collected from them... but no
details can be relied on." --Thomas Jefferson to John Norvell, 1807. ME 11:224
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"History may distort truth,
and will distort it for a time, by the superior efforts at justification of those who are
conscious of needing it most." --Thomas Jefferson to William Johnson, 1823. ME 15:442
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"A truth now and then
projecting into the ocean of newspaper lies serves like headlands to correct our course.
Indeed, my scepticism as to everything I see in a newspaper makes me indifferent whether I
ever see one." --Thomas Jefferson to James Monroe, 1815. ME 14:226
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"The man who never looks
into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them, inasmuch as he who knows
nothing is nearer to truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors. He who
reads nothing will still learn the great facts, and the details are all false."
--Thomas Jefferson to John Norvell, 1807. ME 11:225
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"We... who are retired from
the business of the world are glad to catch a glimpse of truth here and there as we can,
to guide our path through the boundless field of fable in which we are bewildered by
public prints, and even by those calling themselves histories. A word of truth to us is
like the drop of water supplicated from the tip of Lazarus' finger. It is as an
observation of latitude and longitude to the mariner long enveloped in clouds, for
correcting the ship's way." --Thomas Jefferson to John Quincy Adams, 1817. ME 15:145
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"I may say from intimate
knowledge, that we should have lost the services of the greatest character of our country
(i.e., George Washington) had he been assailed with the degree of abandoned licentiousness
now practised... He would have thrown up the helm in a burst of indignation."
--Thomas Jefferson to James Sullivan, 1805. ME 11:73
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"The public... say so from
all quarters... that they wish to hear reason instead of
disgusting
blackguardism."
--Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1799. ME 10:98
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"The firmness with which the
people have withstood the... abuses of the press, the discernment they have manifested
between truth and falsehood, show that they may safely be trusted to hear everything true
and false and to form a correct judgment between them." --Thomas Jefferson to John
Tyler, 1804.
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"The printers and the public
are very different personages. The former may lead the latter a little out of their track
while the deviation is insensible; but the moment they usurp their direction and that of
their government, they will be reduced to their true places." --Thomas Jefferson to
James Monroe, 1811. ME 13:59
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"I would wish you to
distribute [some pamphlets], not to sound men who have no occasion for them, but to such
as have been misled, are candid and will be open to the conviction of truth, and are of
influence among their neighbors. It is the sick who need medicine, and not the well."
--Thomas Jefferson to Archibald Stuart, 1799. ME 10:104
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"During the course of [my]
administration [as President], and in order to disturb it, the artillery of the press has
been leveled against us, charged with whatsoever its licentiousness could devise or dare.
These abuses of an institution so important to freedom and science are deeply to be
regretted, inasmuch as they tend to lessen its usefulness and to sap its safety; they
might, indeed, have been corrected by the wholesome punishments reserved and provided by
the laws of the several States against falsehood and defamation; but public duties more
urgent press on the time of public servants, and the offenders have therefore been left to
find their punishment in the public indignation." --Thomas Jefferson: 2nd Inaugural
Address, 1805. ME 3:380
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"The Chief Magistrate cannot
enter the arena of the newspapers." --Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1811. ME
13:64
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"I have been for some time
used as the property of the newspapers, a fair mark for every man's dirt." --Thomas
Jefferson to Peregrine Fitzhugh, 1798. ME 10:1
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"I have from the beginning
determined to submit myself as the subject on whom may be proved the impotency of a free
press in a country like ours against those who conduct themselves honestly and enter into
no intrigue. I admit at the same time that restraining the press to truth, as the
present laws do, is the only way of making it useful. But I have thought necessary first
to prove it can never be dangerous." --Thomas Jefferson to William Short, 1808.
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"I had laid it down as a law
to myself to take no notice of the thousand calumnies issued against me, but to trust my
character to my own conduct and the good sense and candor of my fellow citizens."
--Thomas Jefferson to Wilson Nicholas, 1809. ME 12:288
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"The man who fears no truths
has nothing to fear from lies." --Thomas Jefferson to George Logan, 1816.
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"I feel no falsehood and
fear no truth." --Thomas Jefferson to Isaac Hillard, 1810.
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"[One printer's] malignity,
like that of the rest of his tribe of brother printers who deal out calumnies for federal
readers, gives me no pain. When a printer cooks up a falsehood, it is as easy to put it
into the mouth of a [great man] as of a smaller man, and safer in that of a dead than a
living one." --Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Law, 1811.
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"From a very early period of
my life, I had laid it down as a rule of conduct, never to write a word for the public
papers." --Thomas Jefferson to George Washington, 1796. ME 9:340
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"I never in my life had,
directly or indirectly, written one sentence for a newspaper; which is an absolute
truth." --Thomas Jefferson: The Anas, 1800. ME 1:435
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"At a very early period of
my life, I determined never to put a sentence into any newspaper. I have religiously
adhered to the resolution through my life, and have great reason to be contented with it.
Were I to undertake to answer the calumnies of the newspapers, it would be more than all
my own time and that of twenty aids could effect. For while I should be answering one,
twenty new ones would be invented. I have thought it better to trust to the justice of my
countrymen, that they would judge me by what they see of my conduct on the stage
where they have placed me, and what they knew of me before the epoch since which a
particular party has supposed it might answer some view of theirs to vilify me in the
public eye. Some, I know, will not reflect how apocryphal is the testimony of enemies so
palpably betraying the views with which they give it. But this is an injury to which duty
requires every one to submit whom the public think proper to call into its councils."
--Thomas Jefferson to Samuel Smith, 1798. ME 10:58
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"[I have seen] repeated
instances of the publication of what has not been intended for the public eye, and the
malignity with which political enemies torture every sentence from me into meanings
imagined by their own wickedness only... Not fearing these political bull-dogs, I yet
avoid putting myself in the way of being baited by them, and do not wish to volunteer away
that portion of tranquillity, which a firm execution of my duties will permit me to
enjoy." --Thomas Jefferson to John Norvell, 1807. ME 11:226
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"Conscious that there was
not a truth on earth which I feared should be known, I have lent myself willingly
as the subject of a great experiment, which was to prove that an administration,
conducting itself with integrity and common understanding, cannot be battered down even by
the falsehoods of a licentious press, and consequently still less by the press as
restrained within the legal and wholesome limits of truth. This experiment was wanting for
the world to demonstrate the falsehood of the pretext that freedom of the press is
incompatible with orderly government. I have never, therefore, even contradicted the
thousands of calumnies so industriously propagated against myself. But the fact being once
established, that the press is impotent when it abandons itself to falsehood, I leave to
others to restore it to its strength by recalling it within the pale of truth. Within
that, it is a noble institution, equally the friend of science and of civil liberty."
--Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Seymour, 1807. ME 11:155
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"My opinion of the manner in
which a newspaper should be conducted so as to be most useful [is]... 'by restraining it
to true facts and sound principle only.' Yet I fear such a paper would find few
subscribers. It is a melancholy truth, that a suppression of the press could not more
completely deprive the nation of its benefits than is done by its abandoned prostitution
to falsehood." --Thomas Jefferson to John Norvell, 1807. ME 11:224
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"Perhaps an editor might
begin a reformation in some such way as this. Divide his paper into four chapters, heading
the 1st, Truths. 2nd, Probabilities. 3rd, Possibilities. 4th, Lies. The first chapter
would be very short, as it would contain little more than authentic papers and information
from such sources as the editor would be willing to risk his own reputation for their
truth. The second would contain what, from a mature consideration of all circumstances,
his judgment should conclude to be probably true. This, however, should rather contain too
little than too much. The third and fourth should be professedly for those readers who
would rather have lies for their money than the blank paper they would occupy."
--Thomas Jefferson to John Norvell, 1807. ME 11:225
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"An editor [should] set his
face against the demoralizing practice of feeding the public mind habitually on slander
and the depravity of taste which this nauseous aliment induces. Defamation is becoming a
necessary of life, insomuch that a dish of tea in the morning or evening cannot be
digested without this stimulant. Even those who do not believe these abominations, still
read them with complaisance to their auditors, and instead of the abhorrence and
indignation which should fill a virtuous mind, betray a secret pleasure in the possibility
that some may believe them, though they do not themselves. It seems to escape them, that
it is not he who prints, but he who pays for printing a slander, who is its real
author." --Thomas Jefferson to John Norvell, 1807. ME 11:225
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