Ep. 268: News and misinformation in early America

In 18th century America, news traveled slowly across the Atlantic. Newspapers reprinted secondhand reports, private letters, and unverified stories from abroad, leaving readers with multiple versions of reality.

In a world educated by an unverifiable news cycle, how did misinformation shape early American life? 

To explore how news, rumor, and misrepresentation influenced the course of the American Revolution and the nation that followed, we are joined by Jordan Taylor, a historian of American history and the author of Misinformation Nation: Foreign News and the Politics of Truth in Revolutionary America.

 

Timestamps: 

00:00 Intro  

02:05 How colonists got their news

08:28 Why foreign news dominated early newspapers

17:33 How colonial newspapers verified information

22:32 Did miscommunication help spark the Revolution?

29:57 The XYZ Affair and the Sedition Act

39:21 The First Amendment's original meaning

44:34 Current day parallels

55:41 Outro

Read the transcript here.

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