The American Revolution and the Effects on Journalism
Prior to the Revolutionary period, the press was used as a way to communicate religious messages through pamphlets and essays because religious matters and religious freedom were of great importance to people of that time period. Newspapers later developed to discuss not only religious matters, but also to cover public happenings. The first paper to really come out was Benjamin Harris’ Publick Occurrences, Both Forreign and Domestick, which was published roughly once a month. The government decided that the paper contained “reflections of a very high nature,” and Benjamin Harris was ordered to end the life of the paper. Nobody made an attempt to begin a newspaper in Boston for another 15 years (Lee 9). I believe this shows that people weren’t as rebellious and courageous as they became later on, during, and after the Revolution. People weren’t willing to take a chance with a newspaper, because they feared the governor would shut it down, or punish the printers. In my opinion, this showed that the press was just beginning as a social force.
The press began to gain more and more force as newspapers began to sprout up (The Gazette, New York Weekly Journal) and printers like William Bradford, Benjamin Franklin, and John Peter Zenger stirred up some controversy within the press and began to help it develop more as a social force. (Sloan 47).
The event, which is said to be the beginning point for the Revolutionary Period, is the passing of the Stamp Act by the British Parliament (Lee 82). As we learned in class, the Stamp Act stated that any legal document that was printed (newspapers being one of these documents) had to be printed on a special stamped paper that included a tax. The point of this Act was to help generate money to help pay off Britain’s debts from the Seven Years’ War and also to help ease the costs of protecting American borders (Sloan 54).
Pamphlets and papers that were published during the Revolutionary War helped people express their opinions about the war and explain what was going on. I believe this is a point when the press was a main social force, and was gaining strength continuously as events like the Boston Massacre, and the Boston Tea Party took place, as well as the war and its fighting.
At the end of the war, many newspapers had ended their career, and many new ones began. A “rebirth” of the press took place and it seems the papers were much stronger after the Revolution. Papers began to almost immediately cover new and pressings issues such as the Articles of Confederation, as well as hoping to establish a new form of government (Reynolds 21). I think the press now seemed to have been a more steady social force. No longer was it establishing itself, or beginning to gain momentum. The press was now a present social force with specific purposes.
