Media manipulation by government nothing to stop the presses over

e-mail this story discuss this issue in our forums Guest column • Rep. Harry F. Cato: Lack of tort gives state a black eye (02/13/05) • David Shi: Media manipulation by government nothing to stop the presses over (02/12/05) • Vardry Ramseur: Water fees fair for all when growth pays for growth (02/12/05) • Brian Helmuth: Michael Crichton presents a state of denial (02/11/05) • Mark Sanford: Seat-belt bill passed by Senate needs work (02/10/05) More details David Shi is a historian, writer and president of Furman University. His campus address is 3300 Poinsett Highway, Greenville, SC 29613, or send e-mail to david.shi@furman.edu.

Recent revelations that the Bush administration paid Armstrong Williams and other journalists to promote its policies in the press have generated great consternation and prompted public apologies as well as ongoing investigations. Although Tribune Media Services, which syndicates Williams' weekly newspaper column, severed its ties with the commentator, the controversy persists.

Backroom political efforts to influence the press are not new. There is a rich tradition in the American experience of political figures trying to shape journalistic coverage. After the Revolution, for example, it was quite common — and accepted practice — for politicians to disguise their identity with pseudonyms in order to write highly partisan newspaper commentaries favoring their particular political stances.

Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson, for instance, engaged in a ferocious journalistic feud over public policy issues in the young republic. Even though the two Founding Fathers served together in George Washington's Cabinet, they hated each other. Everything about them clashed: philosophies, backgrounds and personalities.

Jefferson supported the French Revolution; Hamilton was horrified by its excesses and preferred the British tradition of constitutional monarchy. During the controversy over Jay's Treaty with Britain in 1795, Hamilton used the pen name Camillus (a famous Roman general) to publish 21 essays defending the treaty in The Argus, a prominent New York newspaper. Not satisfied with his efforts, Hamilton at the same time began writing columns under the name "Philo Camillus" praising the arguments of Camillus. In other words, he was using the freedom afforded by one pseudonym to endorse points he was making under a different one!

For his part, Jefferson also wrote anonymous newspaper commentaries favoring his stance on issues. In addition he planted rumors in the press and asked others to do his journalistic dirty work. He once dashed off an angry letter to James Madison, urging his friend to "take up your pen" and cut Hamilton "to pieces" in the newspapers. While serving as secretary of state, Jefferson also hired Phillip Freneau, a renowned poet and essayist, to write articles criticizing policies of the Washington administration. One of Washington's allies warned the president that Jefferson was a "hypocrite and is deceiving you."

An even more brazen effort to manipulate the media occurred during the administration of President John Tyler. In 1842 Secretary of State Daniel Webster entered into protracted negotiations with Lord Ashburton of Great Britain to settle a long-simmering dispute between the two countries over the boundary between Maine and Canada. Ever since the end of the Revolution, the two nations had squabbled over some 12,000 square miles of disputed territory.

Worried that people in Maine might oppose his diplomatic efforts to find a compromise boundary line, the American secretary of state met with Francis Smith, a former Maine senator and prominent newspaper publisher. Smith offered his services to influence public opinion in Maine by adjusting the "tone and direction" of the newspapers to ensure that they endorsed Webster's negotiated settlement. In exchange for such efforts, Smith asked Webster for cash.

Eager to gain approval for his treaty and to avoid possible war with Britain, Webster readily agreed to Smith's scheme and gained President Tyler's approval. The president told Webster to pay Smith from an account intended for expenses associated with foreign negotiations. Thereafter, Smith followed through with editorials in Maine newspapers praising a diplomatic solution to the border dispute. Webster himself wrote unsigned editorials favoring compromise in the National Intelligencer, the leading newspaper in Washington, D.C. On August 9, 1842, the Webster-Ashburton Treaty was signed.

The Webster-Ashburton Treaty may have settled a diplomatic crisis, but the methods the secretary of state used to ensure its passage are symptomatic of the continuing boundary dispute between the press and the presidency. Covert propaganda has become a widespread practice of both parties. Both the Clinton and Bush administrations have spent hundreds of millions on public relations firms hired to influence media coverage.

At the very least, journalists need to disclose if they are paid "consultants" for the government. There is, after all, a difference between journalistic commentary and paid advertisements. Or at least there should be.

Near the end of his life Thomas Jefferson concluded that advertisements "contain the only truths to be relied on in a newspaper." The problem, Jefferson should have added, is to know when the advertisements end and the journalism begins.