Propaganda and American Journalism, Born Joined at Birth

Passion was the main stuff of journalism long before the Civil War, the birthplace of modern American journalism. The Press of the American Revolution during the War and before it, was borne of it. Newspapers then were not as we know them today. Weekly advertising mediums they were, but they were primarily opinion pieces designed to protect interests or to provoke the readership. They were propaganda organs in the truest sense. They were virtual flagpoles of ideology from which the editor could wave his political flag. As tools of political activism they often published articles of principles treating of various freedoms or governmental responsibilities, as the editors saw them to be, mostly by pseudonymous authors sometimes using names taken from the Greek or Roman classics like Cato or Ovid. What news did exist was usually a local crime graphically treated, a poem perhaps, or a reference to a literary work or some happening from Europe that occurred months previously and brought to the editor's notice by people arriving in town. Newspapers shared news too, for as fever rose in the colonies and happenings became more frequent the need to know took place and the sharing of news from paper to paper became more commonplace. But news gathering during the war coverage was not organized, newspapers relied almost wholly on the chance arrival of private letters and of official and semi-official documents. News sources were scarce, but opinion was abundant and it covered both sides. Tory and patriot presses would fire verbal broadsides at each other's interests and any newspaper hoping to maintain a dispassionate objectivity examining both sides of the issues, found themselves in a "no-man's land" and was considered "on the other side." Often the news was engineered, perhaps none so well as the 'reportage' of the Boston Massacre by the Boston Gazette. What led up to the shootings, deemed a " Boston massacre", was the Business of quartering British troops in the public houses and private Homes of residents in America when barracks space was not available. The additional insult to the public was that the colonial legislative body was to provide financing. This was going on for four years after the British Parliament enacted a piece of legislation called the Quartering Act in 1765 and expanded it in 1766, ostensibly to economize on troop expense. When the soldiers first appeared in Boston in 1766 resplendent in redcoats and brandishing gleaming muskets and bayonets, they were held in awe but when it was learned that they were ordered never to use force and that in order to fire a musket they would first have to seek an order from a magistrate, bellicose crowds of youth began to taunt them. A mutual dislike developed between soldier and citizen, taunts epithets and curses the main discourse. Tempers began to flare as Boston tolerance dipped to increasingly low levels. One citizen's distaste for things British turned extreme resulting in the shooting of his neighbor's son, Christopher Seider, an eleven year old Boston youngster Tension between soldier and citizen was stretched thin and snapped on March 2 after rumors were circulated through Boston that the soldiers were planning a massacre of Boston citizens following an incident in which one soldier with a broadsword, slightly injured one young man, who with three companions wished to pass in an alleyway. Later a brawl between some troops and some rope makers erupted, the latter besting the former leaving emotions in a tattered state, then on March 5th, a group of youths taunted a British sentry who took exception by beating one of them with his musket. Fire alarms sounded bringing a crowd of about four hundred to the scene, surrounding the sentry and throwing snowballs, ice and sticks at him. Seven soldiers led by Captain Thomas Preston came to the sentry's support but suffered the crowd's taunts and physical assault with clubs. Daring the soldiers to fire on them, one soldier did after being hit with a club and the others followed suit. Three citizens died on the spot, another the next day and another one a few days later, five were dangerously wounded and a few slightly. One can imagine the reaction of the citizens in the tavern as they heard, through sips of ale , the report in the Boston Gazette informing its readers that the man with a broadsword,who was described as having grown "to uncommon size" and who was now accompanied by " a person of a mean countenance armed with a large cudgel," attacked two of