It’s hard to discern what’s true anymore — think deep-fake videos, rampant misinformation and even disinformation campaigns. But made-up news stories are as old as the United States itself.
Even Benjamin Franklin was a culprit. Utah Valley University history professor Greg Jackson tells the story in his new book, “Been There, Done That: How Our History Shows What We Can Overcome.”
Following the success of the American Revolution and the Battle of Yorktown, Franklin was in France in 1782 negotiating peace with Great Britain when he gave some notes to one of the king’s negotiators. But he forgot the pages that mentioned patriot seizures of British loyalist property, which could have harmed America’s position in the peace talks. To gain the upper hand, the former newspaperman went to his printing press and fired up his imagination.
“He claims that the scalps of continental soldiers, of small children, of Americans, have been taken from a group of British soldiers that were captured,” Jackson said. “And it's all made up.”
Franklin made his story look like part of a Boston newspaper — complete with phony advertisements — and the story got picked up by the British press. Jackson believes this piece of history has lessons for Americans today.
“Fake news is always going to be there. Disinformation is always going to be there,” he said. “If we really believe in the American experiment, if we really do believe in government by the people, then we do have to trust that even if we get it wrong today, that the American people, in the long run, will get it right.”
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Ciara Hulet: The “golden age” of fake news was in the late 1800s with the New York newspapers The World and the Morning Journal. This came as new printing presses allowed publishers to play with colors and fonts. Where did that leave The New York Times?
Greg Jackson: So, The New York Times was nearly dead. It was down to about 9,000 subscribers. And I love that there is a Puck Magazine cartoon published in 1894 that depicts a man in a bowler hat. And he's running with a newspaper in his hand, and it has two words on it: “fake news.” So, the phrase itself is well over a century old.
But to get back to The New York Times, it's reinvented. They lower the price to a penny, so they can compete with the yellow journals. But as they do so, they find that people really do want the news, they do want fact, and The New York Times roars back to life.
And to me, I think there's a very interesting lesson here. It's that technology allowed yellow journalism to flourish and even rise, much like AI, much like social media. We have technology that disrupts, and it invites new participants into media. But at the end of the day, those that are doing good journalism can win out if they can make themselves as affordable, basically take the good and leave the bad out amid technological disruptions. That's what “The New York Times” did, and I'll point out that “The World” is no more. Of the three papers that we're talking about, “The New York Times” is the only one that persists.
CH: What can people learn from these examples of fake news, and how can it be overcome today?
GJ: It's always been there, so stop telling yourself that this is new and that we're facing an unprecedented challenge. This is part of the hard work that any citizen in a republic, in a nation where it’s government by the people, has to do. Thomas Jefferson was complaining about how there had never been worse, more egregious newspapers while he was president. He said that a man would be more informed by not reading the newspaper. And at the same time, Jefferson also noted elsewhere, you know, that we are best off when we trust the people, not a magistrate, to discern the truth.
CH: You say we should all curate our own list of good news outlets and journals. But with misinformation, algorithms and an overwhelming number of places to turn, making a list feels like an uphill battle.
GJ: Sure, and I could also say that, you know, it's just really hard for me to eat a square meal. I mean, I drive by McDonald's, Wendy's, so many fast food places. Does that mean I have to stop at every single one of them now, and I have to have a shake, and I have to have an order of fries? Look, we're on the information highway, and just as we know that there are plenty of places that maybe it's fun to stop at on occasion, but we shouldn't be treating that as our nutritional home.
I understand that algorithms are still kind of a new feeling, but I would even say that this parallels past experiences. Imagine being an 1890s New Yorker, just trying to get around the city, and there you've got newsies, “Extra, extra, read all about it.” You've got the morning edition, the afternoon edition, the evening edition, the extra edition, [the] Sunday edition is over 100 pages long, and they're basically chasing you down the street, berating you to buy this paper. We've been inundated with 24-hour news cycles for over a century, and it's up to us to decide what we put in our heads, just like we have to think about what we put in our bodies.
