>> and said, look, you all know more about atlanta schools than anybody else. you all work this out. and when you get through, call me and i will make it a court order. [laughter] i mean, there was a trust and a realization that this was a real

problem that had to be faced, regardless of the risks that were taken. now, compare that with right now, where, i mean, people are writing about stories in such a way that, well, they do better reporting on the south. i mean, there's more in depth reporting on the football games. >> we like our falcons. to your point earlier, too, and those who read the book, i would point you to the chapter on bogle is a, and while no one would ever say the press is more on the front lines of danger than the people in the movement themselves -- you can say that. but read a chapter. you will see jack and you'll see

that famous finger he used in people's chest when clansmen were threatening jack and jim roberts and several others with her life. they had invited him out to a clan rally, and then the clans people started coming in and saying they are not writing what we are saying. and they were surrounding him and they had to call in a flying wedge. and it only happened because dean was in the chest of a guy saying, if you don't get us out of here alive, you're not going to like what you read and the "los angeles times" tomorrow. [laughter] anything else? >> one quick factoid, an important development of the civil rights movement, the famous case new york times v. sullivan put it was decided, a movement ad in "the new york times" and the libel suit was brought by public official in

alabama, and it redefined constitutional law for the first amendment. saiso that was a very important byproduct and it was these guys like jack on the frontlines of the times. >> and organizations like freedom of the press that helped create depend so much on that. [inaudible] >> thank you. [applause] and i'm going to take the last two minutes here. jack come as many of you know, in 1959, went down to the state hospital and he found horrible conditions. he found patient abuse. he found people misrepresenting their skills and their licenses and their medical know-how. you have people who are not qualified to do surgery doing surgery. it was just a litany of problems, and jack got slugged.

he got beat up. he got thrown over a desk. he took a lot of abuse for this, and he won a pulitzer prize. and i believe, mrs. carter, i've heard you said before this was very important to you in development of mental health as your primary issue as first lady, and even now. and so i think that that connects really important dots between the career of jack nelson and what the carter center today stands for. >> and jack i think, if i'm correct, was the first lecture of the first -- spoke to the journalist. they bring journalists in, teach them about how to do better stories than. great program. great program, great success. i believe that jack did a speech to the first group of interns. he felt very deeply about that. >> and i'm a proud member of our advisory board comes with thank

you. ladies and gentlemen, let me say one thing. we're going to go out to the lobby in a minute after president carter is able to leave, and mrs. carter, and were going have some readings from the book, for short readings. kevin reilly will be reading, cynthia tucker, pulitzer prize winner. i shared that day with her, will be reading. rosemary micki, will be reading, and jim bentley, jack's former colleague. we also have on display examples of the nelson papers that are now at marble, and i just want to thank all of you, especially our panelists so much. it was just a great event. thank you so much. [applause] >> please keep your seat to let the president carter leave. >> in a few moments, todd andrlik on his book, "reporting the revolutionary war: it was history, it was news."

in about an hour and 15 minutes, how editorial cartoons have been used in the health care debate. >> several life events to tell you about today. here on c-span2, a group of foreign policy scholars atlantic council discuss u.s. policy towards iran. on our companion network, c-span, at 11 a.m. eastern, the brookings institution host a discussion on the role of women in the air world and with the u.s. is doing to help advance the status of women and girls in the region. also on c-span at 12:30 p.m., the society of american business editors and writers hears from former reagan administration budget director david stockman. former comptroller general david walker and federal reserve vice chairman janet yellen. >> actually a significant that

this amount has been preserved all these years. at one point there were probably about 30 to 40 of these mounds around the salt river valley. and only a couple of them have survived. most of the mounds were much smaller, about a third to a quarter of the size of mesa grande, and it system around which survived also, pueblo grande. so a lot of those were destroyed and these did survive. and it offers us an opportunity to study them, learn about their lifestyle, and hopefully learn something about how complex their social and political organization was. i always thought with archaeology, one of the great things we have about archaeology is that when we look into the past and see what people did, like building these canals, i think it gives you hope for the

future. because if they could do this in the desert with digging sticks, what is it we can give? >> this weekend booktv and american history tv tour the history and literary life of mesa, arizona, including a look at the great temple mounds built by the indians between 1100-1400 a.d. saturday at noon eastern on c-span2's booktv, and sunday at five on american history tv on c-span3. >> now from boston, todd andrlik talks about his book "reporting the revolutionary war: it was history, it was news." this is an hour 15 minutes. >> it's an honor to be speaking here at the old state house. thank you all for coming. thank you to booktv, c-span for joining us here. about three weeks into the design of "reporting the

revolutionary war" we realized we were on pace to produce an 800 page, to inspect volume. so we quickly cut corners and retrace our steps and decided to scale back and produce what is now a 400 page book for you. similarly, i prepared a five hour presentation for you this evening -- [laughter] and decided to scale that back to a more manageable 45 minutes. so i'll start by saying this, without newspapers, there would have been no american revolution. newspapers are what fans the flames of rebellion. they sustained loyalty to the cause. they provided critical correspondence during the war, and they ultimately aid in the outcome. historians know this very well. for 200 plus years historians have referenced these newspapers

in the footnotes of their own analysis and interpretations. what this book does is it inverse or traditional history book, taking those newspapers that had been in the footnotes and placing them at the forefront. for general readers like you, to enjoying full access to the full color newspapers from the period. feel like you are reading over the shoulder of george washington or paul revere. now, process for putting this book together was quite a journey for me. i started off as an enthusiast and then became a collector, and then became an educator through a website called ragland.com and ultimately through this book. the story of how i first discovered historic newspapers happened about five years ago. my wife and i took her first

family vacations to glean illinois to the cozy mississippi river town, where on the main strip their we discovered a rare book shop and in tha in the rark shop i found this kind of nondescript old newspaper. picked one up and started reading it and it was april 21, 1865, "new york times." i was reading about abraham lincoln's assassination and the reward for the capture of his conspirators. that moment triggered enthusiasm for history that i previously had never had. so for the next five years, it became this journey of meticulous kind of collecting newspapers because i'm tucked away in the midwest. i don't have convenient access to a lot of the wonderful archives on the east coast. i don't have access to a lot of the originals that are found in the libraries and institutions across the country. so i made it a point to try to

collect these because much like any other historical collectible, are available for sale, for purchase. so any of you have ever seen in american papers on history channel, i would say it's much like that. i would equally myself to american pickers, but more along the lines of historic documents, newspapers. where i am traversing the earth trying to find and locate the newspapers out of rare bookshops and european book euros, and people have discovered them in attics and behind walls of old homes. so it's an exciting discovery process. and these newspapers eventually grew and accumulated to where they became a significant collection. one of the most significant private collections of american revolution era newspapers. and the story they told was fastened. one that deserves to be shared with the general readership,

which this book hopefully accomplishes. so tonight what it wanted it this kind of walk you through what i would consider to be the four buckets of discovery that i've made along this journey. and i categorize those buckets as one being the old media, and the journalism discovery, the history discovery, and then what i would call paper and preservation discovery. so let's start with an old media versus new. quantity. today we are looking at practically limitless sources of news. television, radio, internet, social media, twitter. you name it, you have access to a seemingly unlimited quantity of news sources. back then, newspapers were the only mass media of the day.

the first newspaper printed on american soil successfully was the boston newsletter in 1704. it wasn't until 18 years later that we had the second american newspaper printed, also in boston, the boston gazette. coincidently the next day the third newspaper started in philadelphia, the american new mercury. circulation. the top 100 newspapers in america averaged circulation as approximate 200,000. at the time of the american revolution for averaged circulation was approximately 600. that sounds awfully low, but keep in mind that these newspapers were also read aloud in taverns and in private homes. so while subscribership or situation might be low, actual readership is quite significant.

distribution, we have internet, telephone -- concert, tv and radio today. acting distribution of newspapers was done primarily through horseback and ships them. the time but, today news is instantaneous, on demand. you can flip open your phone and have almost real-time news at your fingertip. 200 plus years ago, the news came up -- the news came the weekly -- i'm sorry. the news came weekly and so the time like when you would open up newspaper and you find is that was who were from a day old is several months old. a large part of that was just the amount of transit time that had to go into how far the news traveled to reach the colonial printer. so for instance, you might have news to me from across the atlantic in which case the

average voyage with four to eight weeks. the length of these newspapers, today we've newspapers that roughly about 20 to 30 pages, multiple sections. back then the average newspaper was four pages long. so picture one large sheet of paper. that one large sheet of paper on one side of the four pages one in four. so the front and the back page of the newspaper then old and have and on the inside you would have pages two and three. so what we think of today as kind of, well, backtrack. the front page and the fourth page were typically typeset earlier in the week, whereas the into your pages, pages two and three, were typeset later in the week, or more closer to actual publication date. so what we would associate as being front page cover story news was typically found on page two or three, not on page one in

four where you'd have more of the foreign news, essays, advertising and so forth. the frequency we talked about how today we have the daily and instant new section. back then we had weekly. today we have left and right wing media. back then you patriot and loyalist newspapers to it was very important for me this book include both perspectives of patriot and loyalists, as well as american and british newspapers. this takes us to the journalism discovery. today, newspapers have paid professional staff of reporters and editors. back then they didn't have professional paid staff. the number one news source was private correspondence.

this has an article that starts off with letter some boston complained much of the taste of their fish being altered, which would possess a humorous takes on the boston tea party. what you find most commonly is the extract of a letter from leading into the articles of the day. you also note there were not headlines. headlines weren't very common in 18th century, and so most of the articles back then would lead with extract of a letter from, or a dateline. another primary news source was the exchange system or other newspapers. once a colonial printer would print the weekly addition, they would send issues up and down the continent to the other colonial printers who within reprint extracts from the addition in their own, often under a dateline. so here's new york generally six. this is also a "boston gazette"

issue from 1766. so here the new york generally six dateline tells me that this news came from new york and most likely the new york newspaper. after action reports are also the primary source of news once the war begins. so after action reports are when the commanding officer would write a summary of the events of the military engagement that they were in the battle, and send it up the chain. often in america that would be the president of congress. the president of congress would then share that after action report with the local newspaper printer. than a newspaper printer would send their additions up and down the continent and you would see the after action reports appear in multiple newspapers up and down the colonies. so here we have a genuine 23r 23rd, 1777 issue of the continental journal. this includes george

washington's home account of the crossing of the delaware. so you can see the top of dateline ultimate. that's where congress was meeting at the time. i said earlier you really don't see a lot of headlines in 18th century newspapers. mostly the datelines are the extract from a letter. here's the april 21, 1775 issue of the new hampshire gazette. extraordinary for its content in that it reports the breaking news of the battle of lexington and concord, but also struck a significant for its journalism. the fact that the left column is dedicated to that content of lexington and concord. more importantly, it's the centered headlines, two word headline, bloody news, which surely got the attention of the colonists reading this particular newspaper. more so was the point that i made earlier about how breaking

or domestic news was typically found on pages two and three. this here it is domestic breaking news on page one. so another significant journalism peace to catch the readers attention. illustrations are also something you don't see frequent in newspapernewspaper s. where you would see them is in the nameplate, or where here we have paul reveres famous join or die nameplate with the serpent and the dragon. you also see them in advertisement. so present the advertiser on the left, the advertiser on the right is for a derived service. there was, however, one illustration depicting current events. only one. and that is the battle of bunker hill. the virginia gazette of august, 1775 printed in the middle column and the eyewitness

account of the battle of poker hill. the eyewitness account contain such a vivid details of the actual battlefield, or the entrenchment, that the publishers of this is at put together a rudimentary kind of illustration using just the common tools they had in the print shop if this is what looked like. now, periodicals coming from great britain, these are monthly three articles, you tend to see maps and some illustrations in there, not in newspapers. and you think that after this addition that other colonial newspapers would see this and perhaps make some of processes for developing some more types of illustration. we don't. my guess is that logistically just time wasn't on the side and they couldn't do this repeatedly.

this is the only known illustration to depict a current event and a newspaper during the entire revolutionary war. this is also the age of enlightenment. so we have journalism as entertainment and education. on the left is a new jersey cassette from 1778, whether right two columns are dedicated to the reestablishment of the continental army. the details of the infantry, artillery, the calvary. on the left is a column that depicts mathematical theories. on the right is a freeman's journal printed in philadelphia where the entire front page is dedicated to news of the surrender of cornwallis. in poetry. advertising is often something that struck me in the sense that there are a lot of advertisements for runaway slaves, indentured servants for sale. david mccullough is an advocate for primary sources and

the general public and students reading primary sources but and what he says is that these deserted soldiers advertisements in newspapers are where we get a lot of information about what the uniforms look like because they are describing these soldiers that have deserted. another interesting advertisement that struck me was in a january 20, 1776 issue of the pennsylvania ledger your here we have 10 days after the first publication of thomas paine's common sense, one of the first advertisement for common sense. there it is. what was interesting to me about this particular edition is that in the same newspaper is another advertisement for an for a new n of common sense, which suggests just how quickly this pamphlet was moving. which brings me to the into the history discovery.

no taxation without representation, that argument springs to life in newspapers. at may 10, 1764 issue of the pennsylvania gazette. on page two is one paragraph that details the forthcoming sugar act. in that article, it says a scheme of taxation that has been praises debated in the parlor, whether they have the power to lay such attacks on the colonies which has no representative from parliament and determined in the affirmative. what's also interesting is this is where you get the first and teaser for the forthcoming stamp act that we know so well. besides is an internal tax was cut off come you can't see that but it says besides this an internal tax is forthcoming. violence and mobs and violence are also something that struck me because of the sheer

magnitude of the violence that is reported in the newspapers of the day. in particular, this is a supplement to the boston newsletter from september 5, 1765. extraordinary for multiple reasons. one, on the front page of the two page issue is details of the destruction of lieutenant governor thomas hutchinson's home, the lieutenant governor of boston. but on page two from newport, rhode island, we read of summer home destruction of loyalists in stamp massive. so here it reads for a three-day riot, practical to-do list. day one, a simple and direct galas. make effigies of stamp master and hated louis. card effigies through town to galas and hoist effigies by nick 15 feet high. make a fire and burn those effigies to ashes. choose deputies of the 10 to

choose committed to instruct the deputies on the stamp act the day to anything, gathe gather ad and marched to house of hated loyalist number one. shatter his windows, break his doors to pieces. damage partitions and one for which. march to the home of hated loyalist number two. care his house to pieces, demolish his furniture and ravaged the so to destroy all provisions and one. march to the home of the stamp master. threaten his own if he doesn't resign. receive the promise of resignation to return to the first two homes to continue the destruction. [laughter] and then the following morning, a3, listen to the stamp masters public resignation and wait for the loyalist the sale to england and then sell their real estate. so we have much violence reported in the newspapers, and this is in a boston newspaper. so shortly the bostonians were probably pleased to see that what they had done previously

was catching on any of the colonies. and this had the desired effect that they very much wanted it. it forced the stamp masters to resign, which prevented the enforcement of the hated stamp act. so what you see in the newspaper, after this is all up and down the colony the other towns taking summer courses to prevent the enforcement of the stamp act. along similar lines was the fact that benjamin franklin was one of those targeted hated colonists whose home in this close to being destroyed by a mob of patriots, because it ben franklin showed sentiment of moderation and compliance with the stamp act. he appointed a friend of his to be a stamp master, and those sentiments of compliance in moderation come through in the newspapers. so for instance, benjamin franklin printed the

pennsylvania gazette. and 17 -- from 174 1742 the nex5 years until 1768, he remained a business partner where on the back of every pennsylvania gazette it still listed his name. so while he didn't come wasn't active in the daily printing business, it still carried his name and that pennsylvania gazette was one of the first principal text of the stamp act. that pennsylvania gazette, a few weeks later was also advertising for frankland poor richard's almanac, which in 1766 edition they were promoting it as having the for test of the stamp act which all colonists should become fully with because it's going to affect you all. and so there it is newspaper accounts come you start to see sentiments of complaints.

also the boston tea party. this is december 211773 printed in salem, massachusetts. here we have one of the most popular eyewitness accounts of the boston tea party. it was written by an impartial observer, pseudonym, very, for students to be used. but in this account you read about a padlock being destroyed aboard one of the ships and other colonists, the rebels who were rioting quickly replace that padlock so must remain blameless or anything but the destruction. you also learn in that same account of one of the rebel colonists pocketing some of that, and quickly being pummeled. we also learned that boston tea party was not universally celebrated. in the federal eight, 7074 issue of the gazette, we read the town minutes from marshfield

massachusetts of the meeting with a label the boston tea party illegal, unjust and dangerous. the shot heard around the world, well, i learned that was very close to happening on multiple occasions weeks and months prior to april 19, 1775. one case in particular that is covered in the book is how close they came to happening for months prior in new hampshire. also along paul revere lines i learned he went on multiple revolutionary rights. one case in particular was his ride to philadelphia and back to share the suffolk result. suffolk counties response, where it says by paul revere. another interesting time in the british newspaper was the printing of the declaration of independence the the arrival of

the declaration of independence was on august 10, 1776, in london. three days later the london chronicle your prints what is an 18th century equivalent of a tweet, and that we have advices received that the congress resolved the independence on the fourth of july and it is said, have declared war against great britain in form. two issues later they print the full text of the declaration. there's a january 23, 1777 issue of the continental journal. this was printed in boston. this was the front page account of george washington crossing the delaware, the battle of trenton. called out the phrase that washington used they knew they were about to be cut to pieces. and pointed at as being some harsh language to come from the future president. we also read in the british newspapers about john paul jones, the first american naval

hero. he was also an american pirate to the british. during the accounts, you read what is in essence a fashion report. paul jones he was dressed in a short jacket and long trousers, a belt around his middle and a countless innocent. john paul jones, i have not yet begun to fight, it turns out he likely didn't say that. and what he probably said was more closely what was printed in the newspapers of the day. in this case, the advertiser that quotes him as saying i may think that i will be damned if i strike. >> saratoga, the turning point of the war. i was struck by the pennsylvania ledger from early 1778 that

printed the objections that congress raised to the terms of surrender, the terms they're going to throw to. this pennsylvania ledger printed in british occupied so duffy. so this happened to be under a headline that you don't see here, extracts from rubble papers. but he we have congress, continental congress asking where some of the surrendered items are. so how come the number of muskets is less than that of the prisoners, and that all the muskets are unfit for service? how come the number of bayonets are so greatly inferior to that of the muskets? you what also got to me was benedict arnold and his treason help revitalize a lingering war. conrad who wrote the contextual

essay for benedict arnold and that section of the book points to the nathaniel green papers and which all the nathaniel green correspondence that we have researched them will then want instant when the then new green pointed to god intervening in the revolutionary war. and it was fearing the treason uncovered on benedict arnold. nathaniel green as suggested even in this report feels that god has intervened in the revolution or, and helped the americans uncovered the treasonous plot. you also see -- after he becomes the hated benedict arnold, during the raid of new london, colonists start to point fingers and sa say we saw part say we sw part of overdoing this mischief, and he was over doing this. so you start to see arnold every worker in this case arnold was having dinner with a close

friend, then plundered the house after dinner and set it afire. yorktown, diane depew who is a national public service veteran, she contributed the assays for the yorktown campaign. and in that we learned that there was a celebrity intervention. that the british commander, hillary clinton, who was delayed in sending reinforcements down to cornwallis at you yorktown, partially that was due to the fact that clinton was entertaining a celebrity in new york. that celebrity, king george the thirds son, prince william henry. diet also comments on a bit of irony. october 19, the day of the surrender, but they that they sail from new york to yorktown to provide those reinforcements. just so happens that one of the ships in the fleet is commanded by cornwallis is younger

brother. which then brings me to the kind of last bucket of discovery. what i would call paper and preservation discoveries. prior to 1870, before the transition to woodpulp, newspapers were printed on raglan in stock. paper made of linen rags primarily off the backs of the call is, what people wore as a close. also ship sails. these rags were oil and pulp and sifted into the sheets of paper. the durability plays a significant role in their preservation in that today we can find 250 year-old newspapers that are in better condition than, say, last week's "boston globe" which probably is already yellow and brittle. so thanks to the rag linen paper on which they are printed him and thanks to the institution

that bound them into volumes for long-term storage, we have these wonderful printed accounts of what transpired are in the american revolution. what identity is also look for newspapers that others might consider trash, where they are extremely beat up. they have holes. they have lived a long life, and through fire and flood and war. and so they are torn and tattered a little bit. and i've partnered with one of the top paper conservators out of d.c. who is the head of conservation at a major museum, to restore these newspapers as close to their original condition as possible. you can do some amazing things with old paper. so for instance, the hole at the bottom, stains or reduced, scotch tape that has been used on these papers can be removed and these papers can be preserved -- preserve once again. that the beginning of the book i

point out that there are no photographs of the american revolution. we have photographs of the civil war and every major war the after but not of the american revolution. i think that plays a large part of the american revolution being unreal in some part. newspapers are very timely. they print vivid descriptions of battlefield accounts and what was transpiring throughout the full course of the war, and so very much do these newspapers are the photographs of the war. they helped make the american revolution real to me, and my goal with this book was that the newspapers helped make the american revolution real for others. thank you very much a product.

[applause] [inaudible] >> i want to share of you and it does -- anecdotes. on the east side of the balcony, after it's passed on july 4, so it took a little while to get up to boston from philadelphia, but they got there and it was right. abigail adams was in the crowd is all the balcony in the intersection and wrote to her husband, john, and said, it was crazy after the declaration was read. everything british was ripped down and burned in the middle of the intersection any duty after the reading, including the unicorn that now we flamed --

those put up in 1881. but immediately it was one of the first to think that was ripped off as symbols of british authority and burned in the middle of the intersection. so it was a little rambunctious in boston. they continue to be, but before that in 1770 on march 5, the boston massacre happened just outside as well. something we're very all the money with, something that bob allison contributed to in the book as well as his own book on that. but another rambunctious event in the city of boston, just right outside this building itself. but i'm going to turn to a panel discussion which is going to be in the form of question and answer session. this mic in the middle of the aisle is for you to step up to, ask your questions to the panel. and right now going into issue

to the panelists. so begin with bob allison, he's the chair of the history department at suffolk university just down the street. he teaches at the harvard extension school and there's also several books of boston in american religion. he most recently in 2011 book entitled the american revoluti revolution. he is the vice president of the cornell society of massachusetts, a trustee of the uss constitution museum, also on the freedom trail. he also serves the bostonian society and the old state house as a member of our board advisory committee. so with that, bob allison. [applause] >> next we'll move to john doe. john belt is the curator. it's aside dedicated history analysis and unabashed gossip

about the start up of the american revolution a new and the. he recently completed a large study on jenna washington during the siege of boston for the national park service. he has also written about new england's, town watchman at the boston massacre, the wave of bankruptcies in 1765, and the towns rally night hope tonight. that was a crazy event annually. he has lectured and many historical societies around greater boston including this one. john bell. [applause] >> and todd andrlik, among the nations leading authorities on 18th century newspapers, as you can no doubt tell. he is one of the most significant collections of american revolutionary newspapers containing the earliest printed reports of practically every major event, battle, from 1763-1783.

todd is the curator and publisher of before history.com, an online museum archive, of historically significant newspapers dating back to the 16th century. todd andrlik. [applause] >> so we will open up the question and answer with our panel. >> let me just say that pot has done something extraordinary with this book pashtun todd has done. i got a call a couple of years ago from a guy who collects newspapers and he wanted to do a book. and i said that's great. and what is done in this book is taking these newspapers, these primary sources and published them. that in itself is a unique. those of us who are fortunate enough to live in boston or other places that have great research labors know we can go to the boston public library, go on the website to get a lot of american newspapers.

todd has taken them and put them in and put them in the book but then he did even more fantastic which is to assemble just about every scholar on the american revolution, people have a great detailed knowledge of the particular event or place that is the focus of the park service curators that if interpreted different sites can who really know the site, or people in the boston in 1775. and no one knows boston better than john bell. all around this country, and i think it is todd's both his passion, his enthusiasm and his seemingly midwestern innocence that told us into saying, okay, in contributing. so you can take this book if you are a teacher or a college professor and teaching the american revolution, and who have probably the best account of the battle of utah springs you will ever find. or any other event in the revolution. so this is the resource for teaching the american revolution. i congratulate todd for putting it together.

>> i'm not a degreed historian. i play one on tv, but no, it was important to me that the newspapers, the historically supported by the authorities on the subject matter. and so i drafted 37 top historians to bridge the centuries and kind of hold the hands of the general reader so that when they're trying to consume 18th century media, which isn't always the easiest thing for us today, they have the experts who can kind of point out certain things that they should be noticing. and keep in mind that these are also the number one propaganda tools of the error. and so they do come with occasional errors and omissions and inaccuracies that the contributors to the book, what they did is they serve as

referees. they were calling fouls on the errors and omissions and point that out for the modern reader. these documents alone can be dangerous, but when they're contextualized by experts, they are a beautiful thing. >> the newspapers of the time or in some ways an attempt to bring order to the event by issuing the size, the view of the sides of the newspapers supported. so todd mentioned the rights in boston before the war, for instance. the newspapers would occasionally report on those but they would also try to sort of downplaying the destruction or would say that the riots were done by sailors and boys, people who are not respectable citizens of the town. but in those newspapers are still very important because they say what the other people in, learned about those events.

>> questions? yes. >> so, you're describing the media was a wireless link the way we thought left wing and right wing media. i'm wondering if you found in any of your research anything that sort of resembles like opinion pieces are called that way we know today? do you know when? >> usually page one of the newspapers contained serialized essays that would go on sometimes for multiple issues, where they would provide one perspective of a certain argument. and then sometimes he would also see then the counter argument immediately following, often still under pseudonyms. >> i would say the fact that everything was opinion. a lot of the time -- that was not really the intent of an impartial journalism yet.

so when you read about an event, it was usually been presented from the point of view of a one side, the side of the newspaper to todd mentioned earlier the boston tea party account that was written by an impartial observer. of course, he was really impartial. it was very much preventing these people just different hundreds of thousands of modern dollars worth of property as being very respectful of private property and putting back that locked and making sure that no tea was stolen for selfish reasons. so the value of impartiality was there but it was seized by both sides for the own site. because they viewed themselves as being the ones who have the fair, complete view of the realistic view of events, and the other side is bending all the facts. >> msnbc and fox news today our

models of impartiality compared to the revolutionary period. [laughter] you still have an occasional newspaper title that attempted to remain neutral. so the boston evening post. >> the boston chronicle when it came to boston, a chicago immigrant named john tried to be impartial and he tried to publish old articles on both sides. didn't work. he eventually became the strongest supporter of the royal government, and was driven out of town. >> on the other side of that, with the now we have so many different sources of media we can kind of fact check. how often what was printed in newspapers outright lies and order to gain support for to turn people directly to one side or the other? >> well, i mean, you are definitely finding

exaggerations, whether it was drastic or not. what i was interested in finding was that a lot of newspaper accounts came with disclaimers. so the publishers of the newspapers, printers still very much valued reliable source. and if the source was questionable, they would frequently print that with the article from some sort of disclaimer. >> i remember there was a letter, it was published after the battle of lexington and concord that talks about the british soldiers coming to the parsonage in lexington and rampaging through and killing the barnyard animals. that never happened. there's a letter about the battle of bunker hill has said as soon as the soldiers reach charleston, some of them try to desert and run away. and he had two of them strong up immediately. that didn't happen either. there were doubtful he propaganda pieces. but todd is right to the

printers tried to provide their reader with what they do with accurate information. it was just that it, it was as accurate as they understood. just to be on the fair site, at one point some of the letters from john adams and benjamin harris, to continental congress delegates, were sent up to boston from philadelphia. they were brought by a young lawyer who was captured. the british got hold of these documents, and they publish them. and the john adams letters were just a rouge about the other continental congress delegates that they did have to change anything in the lead in the harrison letters they change it to make it look as if george washington was having an affair with a mate at a tavern. so yes, both sides were using propaganda within the newspapers. >> interest lay in the middle of the war i stumbled upon a few london chronicles that report that george washington had died

in battle, and normally these are also kind of the rumor hearsay. their way of adding disclaimer was different the more gossipy news from the less viable sources also at the back of the newspaper. so the london chronicles was an eight page newspaper and the news is more commonly found on page eight. >> these are also in competition with each other so they will correct, challenge what each other say. they knew each other personally. you read his newspapers and you'll find the biggest villain in new york is james. this character each side is going to attack the other one personally which i guess is the fact checking. i was just reminded of what thomas jefferson. you can divide the newspaper, truth, half-truth, partial truths and lies. he thought the for the section would be the longest. [laughter] >> there was no in the late 1760s, this color printer was so

upset, he came to the cassette office and club jong-il, one of the printers over the head. so it got personal spin keep in mind again all of these news accounts are coming from private correspondence and eyewitnesses, and the after-action reports. so i was also interested in learning on the contextual essays was just how shockingly accurate a lot of these were. so one of the more common war propaganda tactics was to inflate the number of the enemy and deflate your own. so as to kind of magnify any victory or known any loss. >> i had a question come along the same lines of propaganda leading up to the war. it occurs to me in several occasions we read about certain individuals meeting in print shops. the adams quote you had this

morning. so i wonder how prevalent was organized efforts to propagandize these two papers? been on the other side of that, who financed some of these things? the newspapers are pretty obvious. printers are making money but then we have things like broadsides. i'm always truth about who is funding it was a super pac from the patriot side? like hancock financing certain, who is paying the piper a not? >> okay, i'll start with the question of meeting and newspaper offices. this was, and gary mentioned on boston 1775 a quarter of a bit of john adams in 1769 in his diary where he spent sunday evening at the office at the print shop where there reading the "boston gazette." samuel adams was there. a man named william davis and possibly james otis. and they were cooking up things

for the next day's newspaper. essays, what adams and what john adams called occurrences. and i think that might be a reference to an actual, a concerted effort that the boston patriots, or weeks at a time, had done to tell other newspapers and other towns what it was like to be living in boston under the occupation of the british army from 1768-1770. so they resent what they call the journal transaction every week say, oh, and this horrible thing happened. this soldier was very bad this weekend here's what's happening with soldiers on trial for this. those were not actually published in the boston papers because of course everybody in boston was supposed know about the award. those were sent to new york, and then from the new york papers they were sent all up and down the coast. and eventually they were reprinted in boston.

so that was an example of the very definite effort by one side of the political divide to use the power of the press to bring the empathy of entire seaboard to boston. you also talked about who financed it. well, it looks like william cooper, the boston template was involved inviting some of those reports. said adams, he was being paid by the massachusetts house because he was the clerk of the house. said he was actually earning a salary as a politician, rather rare at that time. so in a way the government were supporting the time that went into writing those reports. there is an article by historian called oliver dickinson, a number decades ago, about the control of the boston press during the prerevolutionary preeta. and he found in british

government archives a letter from, the printers in boston post boy. they were basically saying, look, you were spending all your money. you were sending all your money to the boston chronicle and the boston chronicle has not gone out of business. so why don't you support is? why don't you give us a stationary contrac contact you h the boston chronicle? why don't you buy our paper and we will support -- it was implicit. we will support your side of the dispute. so again it was another arm of the government supporting this newspaper. and i believe there were also when ezekiel russel put out a magazine called the boston center, which was presented the lowest point of view, i believe he was being supported by some of the rich loyalist in town through either subsidies or

everybody agreed yes, we will buy subscriptions for this magazine. and that will allow somebody in boston to show our side of the dispute. so i hope that answered the question. spent and all of the discussion about the news sources we get the impression we think of a newspaper today in terms of not only publication house but also this big network of professionals, syndicates and reporters and things like that. and i have the impression from what you say that we are talking during the time period just of printers who are relying strictly on whatever sources they can, whether it be official government documents that commit or letters, or some who shows up and said i was there, i can tell you what happened. is that the correct since? >> a lot of the first goal in the newspapers were also printed

by postmaster because they have access to the number one news source of the day, the private correspondence. so easy that a lot, but -- >> it's pretty much the case. franklin was one of the most successful printers in the country, and he became the deputy postmaster. this is something that then carries over into the early republic newspapers can travel free through the mail because it was in interest on the part of the united states government, have information flowing freely and have these things picked up from one newspaper and another. ratifying the constitution in fact, massachusetts is probably, was very resistant to the new constitution. the supporters of the massachusetts happened to control the male and one of the most influential documents was the opposition of the pennsylvania minority, pennsylvania's ratification. is circulated throughout the country except in massachusetts or the post office here held it up because they didn't want this

to be entering into political discourse before massachusetts had voted. so controlling the post office and controlling the flow of news is one of the essential things here, and this book really helps us to see the connections between, the connections between the free flow of information which is different from the free flow of information today. .. >> we know that not because he came back and filed an eyewitness report of what

happened, your reporter, isaiah thomas, no. we know that only because a customs official who was chased by this crowd in cambridge said it was mr. thomas as a spy who got them upset at me. and so that's the whole notion of journalism was evolving at the time. it really, i think, in the early republic is the first time i'm seeing people owning newspapers who aren't, who haven't been trained as printers. i guess maybe joseph greenleaf who is, he's a magistrate of, a justice of the peace from rural massachusetts. he comes into bostonly -- boston shortly before the revolution and is a partner with isiah thomas in the magazine. but until that point the magazines, the newspapers, everything was really the enterprise of somebody, a printer, a pan who had gotten -- or in a few cases, woman -- had

gotten their fingers dirty putting type in lines and actually working those presses. it wasn't until the next generation that we began to get this other sort of, these other professions of the reporter or the newspaper publisher who doesn't get his hands dirty but gets all the money. >> i think it's also, just thinking about the differences and similarities between newspapers then and now. today i think we have this idea of impartiality and so on and professional journalists, i would use air quotes if that were a tasteful thing. but remember, the fundamental purpose of a newspaper in 1775 and today is pretty much the same, that is it's a money-making enterprise. no one is going to pay for the church bulletin, but you want someone to buy your newspaper, and when will you do that if that requires hiring a staff, then you do that. if it's a one-man operation that you're turning out, that's how

you do it. so i think we may have an illusion about the press serving some higher purpose other than -- there's nothing wrong with the purpose of making money, so i'll just leave it. [laughter] and remind you to buy books when you -- [laughter] >> also when i say it's the printer, the printer would probably have the advantage of the labor of the printer's wife, the printer's children, apprentices, maybe a couple journeyman. so it wasn't a one-person operation, but it was a family, a household operation. >> yeah. you'll see several women printing during the american revolution, and a lot of times they become printer because a husband or a brother passes away, and they resume kind of the operation of the print shop. >> yes. the printer of the boston newsletter which is the only newspaper that keeps going inside boston during the siege, so you can imagine patriot army

reigns outside of boston and food shortages, things like -- that was being kept afloat by margaret draper who was the widow of the previous printer. >> and benjamin franklin, a number of the printers he trained are widows and took over the press. in fact, women remained fairly dominant into the 20th century, it's one of the fields that was still open to women throughout the 19th century. >> yes. >> one of the things i always observe is that when we read history prior to our lives we always do so with knowledge of what occurred, the war took place, etc. and yet be you talk, let's say, to someone who was alive during world war ii, before pearl harbor, we didn't know if the united states would enter or not, so you can get a perspective you wouldn't have on your own. it may be what you were saying

about those newspapers that these newspapers wouldn't have that perspective, but i was curious not from the lead articles, but from the ancillary articles maybe what was happening with the current town meeting events, etc., how those might illuminate your understanding of events that we read about in history today. >> that's actually one of my favorite assignments, is to have students find a newspaper from aniered aniered any newspaper and just read through it for what was the news. it's usually the smaller stories or the ads that are illuminating. i always find it reassuring to read newspapers from 50 years ago, 100 years ago because there was just as much depravity and mayhem then -- sometimes more -- and horrible crimes and oh things going on. you're absolutely right, we get a sense of this world and the everyday world from reading these newspapers. the other great thing for anyone studying history is to know something and not know the

outcome. the person writing this newspaper doesn't know that there is going to be a war for independence or that the united states is going to win the war or that george washington is going to become president. so you drop your knowledge of what happened, and you suspend that, and your just -- you're just immersed in this world. it makes terrific tools for understanding history because, you're right, you do get this different perspective of not knowing everything that has happened since. >> yeah. you don't even know what's going to happen the next week. >> yeah. >> and you can see that some people don't care. they just want to sell you their cod or whatever it is. it gets a real -- it's a wonderful way, reading a full newspaper, of immersing yourself in the life of a particular moment. >> consumption and production very much goes on throughout the course of the war, and so the advertisements do help provide much context with that regard. one of the ads that struck me was in a 1766 pennsylvania

gazette where in the middle column you have under annapolis dateline news of the very first sops of liberty meeting -- sons of liberty meeting takes place in the maryland capital. and so you have here the this unique kind of juxtaposition with news of the sons of liberty, the organization established to fight the tyranny and the potential enslavement of the colonists alongside an advertisement for the sale of an indentured servant. you get a lot of that, by the way, because these newspapers are presented in a fashion where you are allowed to wander and become your own historian, where you can find other interesting tidbits along separate lines of the featured news of the day. >> and because the newspapers were so short, you'd have everything compressed on the same page. you'd have a runaway slave

advertisement next to an advertisement for the latest imported china next to some essay about the political thing next to -- they could get really personal in some of these newspaper essays. nasty back and forth about something we can't care about these days but, obviously, very important back then. >> poetry and another thing maybe we don't care as much about is nasty gossip today. >> i care. >> touche. [laughter] >> mr. we'll talk to you afterwards. >> some of these exchanges, they are very reminiscent of online exchanges where with you have two people anonymous just sniping at each a other for weeks on end. one newspaper, and then the opposing newspaper's three days later, and he says this. and so it always strikes me, it's so similar, and i think, okay, these days we think it's the anonymity that allows this.

it's the, you know, people spew back these answers so quickly because they're not thinking. well, back then they had three days to think, and they knew exactly who the other guy was because it was a town of 15,000, and they still decided, okay, i don't like his politics, i'm going to talk about his illegitimate child. [laughter] >> [inaudible] >> please use the microphone. >> are the newspapers terribly expensive, and then wald be the most prized possession in your collection regardless of any fee that you may have paid, and then what are you hoping to acquire? what's the treasure that you don't have in your collection at this time? >> well, newspapers range in value based on a number of factors; condition, timeliness of the news, the milestone that is being covered in that particular issue, whether it's

an american issue or a british issue. so a variety of factors. they range anywhere from, you know, tens of dollars to tens of thousands of dollars depending on all those criteria. the kind of most coveted newspaper i would think to many, although that's subjective, is the very first american printing in a newspaper of the declaration of independence which is the july 6th, 1776, issue of the pennsylvania evening post. so that is, you know, obviously, very desirable. >> do you have it? >> no. [laughter] >> do you want it? [laughter] >> the american revolution center which is going to be building the first national museum for the revolution, that's one of their prized artifacts. >> you talk a lot about all the

different sources, and i just wanted to know where did they get a lot of these sources? were they being sent in? were they just rifling through people's mail? how did they get these documents tarp then put in the newspapers? >> want to take that one in. >> i get the sense when we talk about an, tract from a letter from a gentleman, these were private letters, but the gentleman had then probably gone to the newspaper or to a tavern to share the news from his cousin or whatever with the other business people in the town. and so in a way it was, it wasn't that they were rifling through the mail except for in the case, for instance, of john adams and benjamin harrison where they were capturing the mail, it was more -- and there were examples of that in wartime, but it was more that a yesman was sharing the news he -- gentleman was sharing the news he had which, of course, made him more important, and he

would have liked it with the printer. and that leads to some interesting results so that, for instance, we have more details about the battle of lexington and concord in the pennsylvania press than necessarily in the massachusetts press because gentlemen were sending off details that they knew about, and there was no pressure to keep some of these details secret because there was a war on. so the pennsylvania press talks about paul revere, and the massachusetts press does not. >> i had the opportunity to interview on video several of the contributors to the book, and i asked one of them that same question. dennis conrad. and he pointed to a pan you script -- manuscript letter that he had come across where in the margin it said print this, print this, print this as to suggest exactly what the author or of that letter wanted to be printed in the newspaper.

>> i was just wondering since the topic of your collection came up how your collection of silas dogood letters are coming. do you have them all -- >> no, those would be very desirable, but those are earlier and outside of kind of my specialty or out of -- >> oh. i thought they said as early as the 15th century. >> it does, but those are not as in depth or not in the quantity that is the american revolution era. >> but you'd still buy them, right? >> oh, sure. [laughter] >> does everyone know the silence do-good ones? todd, do you want to reveal a secret? >> so benjamin franklin when he was an apprentice in his brother's print shop here in boston just up the street apparently, you know, the

relationship between the brothers wasn't strong, and the older brother didn't want benjamin to really have a role beyond his aprep disship, and benjamin was an up and coming writer and contributed some pieces that he wrote and slid under the door to the print shop as night under the pseudonym silence dogood. and when his brother so farred those, very much fell in love with the writing and printed them under the pen name, silence dogood. >> this was during the smallpox epidemic in boston, and the foremost academic for vaccination was -- attacking the idea of inoculation. the same people that wanted us to execute quaker, and then they wanted us to hang witches, and now they want us to inject

ourselves with smallpox. so the newspaper is attacking the pasters, particularly cotton mather calling him a dung hill cock and baboon, other things you wouldn't find in a newspaper today. [laughter] and under this torrent of abuse, one of mather's daughters died, and he wrote a sermon and preached the sermon at her funeral about the dig dignity of silence under attack. his most famous publication was essays to do good. and i think everyone reading this newspaper knew silence dogood meant cotton mather. and, in fact, in the haas -- in the first of the letters, silence dogood describes herself as a middle-aged widow of a clergyman, being a great lover of her country and very adept at pointing out the faults of others and other characteristics

that other people knew mather was the target. franklin was a brilliant writer, and ear at the age of 16 -- here at the age of 16 he was showing his talent. i don't know if any of you have a smarter younger brother. some of us may be the smarter younger brother, so we can now see from both sides. but i look forward to the next edition of dogood letters and 1720s stuff after the success of reporting the revolutionary war. >> if it's all right, i'd like to backtrack just one moment and ask for your commentary on the role of local newspapers during the battle of lexington and concord or shortly thereafter.

>> well, all the -- massachusetts had printers in boston -- and when the war started, it was, i think there were leaks from the british government that they were telling general gauge, the royal governor, to start cracking down. and the printers, the most radical printers, ethan gill of that partnership and isiah thomas got their presses out of boston just a few days in early april 1775, and eads snuck out around the same time. isiah thomas snuck out on the day of the battle of lexington and concord, crossing with dr. joseph warren. so they were outside of boss top as the sieging began -- boston

as the siege began. so they quickly set up their presses in watertown and worcester in order to srve the patriot cause. and another set of printers came down from salem and renamed their newspaper the independent chronicle to, again, support the patriot cause. one of the ways they supported the patriot cause, they printed reports for the massachusetts government talking about how awful this british attack on concord had been. and how many, how they had fired without provocation on the soldiers or these farmers lined up in lexington and how they had attacked houses on the afternoon of that day. all, and a copy of the newspaper with this report and this version of the battle of lexington and concord, congress commissioned a ship from salem

to carry this across to london, and the ship sailed in ballast which meant it didn't have any cargo. they didn't stop to put in any cargo. the entire voyage was being paid for by the new patriot massachusetts government in order to get their version of what was happening to london first, and it worked. because general gauge had sent -- gage had sent out his report, but he sent it on a slow boat from new york that went across to london, so you can see this in the london chronicle that todd has in the book is waiting and waiting for the official report, the report they think is more credible. meanwhile, the entire capital is talking about what the massachusetts government has said. over time there's a bit of -- it's tough for some of these printers because it's wartime, and at one point isiah thomas and his apprentices are

actually -- todd talked about the rag linen used to make the paper -- the printers would ask people to bring in their old rags in order to send it to the paper makers to be recycled into paper. so they'd have these piles of old rags, and at one point thomas and his apprentices are sleeping on those rags. meanwhile, we talked about inside boston on the other side most of the printers and only margaret draper and her journeyman kept the boston newsletter running. both sides were trying to support their side of the war. they were part of the overall political effort of the conflict. >> an interesting observation that i made in the production of

this book was that the quality of the american newspapers kind of deteriorates, the quality of the paper that the newspapers were printed on tends to deteriorate or seems of significantly less quality in the middle of the war. and so if you flip through the book and you look just at the american newspapers, you can see in 1777 through about 1780 the quality of the paper is less than you would find at the before the war starts and at the the end of the war. but to your point about the fast ship, another interesting tidbit that i read in a 1766 london chronicle was the, it's the issue in the which they announce the repeal of the stamp act. and one of the ways that the stamp act or one of the causes of the repeal of the stamp act is the boycott of british goods. and what that did is, in essence, it made the london

merchants become american lobbyists lobbying parliament for the repeal of the act. and so you read in the london chronicle how the london merchants were celebrating and how as soon as the doors to parliament opened, the london merchants had a commissioned ship, a light, fast ship ready to speed across the atlantic and tell the americans, all of their customers, that, good news, you know? [laughter] >> you can stop boycotting. >> exactly. [laughter] >> there was, there was after the boston massacre, there was a brief discussion in the boston town meeting, should we send a captain, a ship's captain, bostonian said i will carry this report to london. and the boston town meeting discussed it, and they decided they couldn't afford it. and so they didn't put their money towards that. and the royal government actually sent their own report faster. so when 1775 came around, i think that's one reason why the

massachusetts goth was quite -- government was quite willing to spend that money, because they knew they could get scooped if they didn't. >> we'll continue questions downstairs with signing some copies of books and certainly purchasing some copies of the book, right? so let's continue downstairs and ask more questions for the author and panelists, bob, john and todd. >> thank you. >> thank you. [applause] >> tonight on c-span we'll discuss health care for military veterans including the effects of she questions trace on the cost and types of treatments. we'll also look at the health issues affecting veterans returning from iraq and afghanistan including ptsd and the effects of ieds as well as

the increasing number of women veterans. before we talk with the military times writer and take your calls and tweets at 9 p.m. eastern, we'll hear from former air force flight nurse linda schwartz who oversees the connecticut state veterans affairs department. >> but the fear of the career, when you have the chief of the army, general odierno, get up and say i have posttraumatic stress, it's okay, if you think of posttraumatic stress as a natural reaction to an abnormal situation, a natural reaction to an abnormal situation, va and secretary shinseki are trying to get rid of that d at the end. it is posttraumatic stress. and it manifests itself in many

ways, but it should not prevent you from getting help for yourself and for your family to deal with the symptoms that you are having. >> they had a very political marriage much like john and abigail, and so she would lobby in the halls of congress. now, she was always very careful to say my husband believes this, and my husband advocates that. but she herself was doing the pitch. and one of her husband's opponents said he hoped that if james were ever elected president, he would take up housekeeping like a normal woman. and she said if james and i are ever elected, i will neither keep house, nor make butter. >> monday night one of the most politically active and influential first ladies, sarah polk. we'll also look attar successorses, margaret taylor and abigail fillmore.

first lady cans, live monday might at 9 eastern on c-span and c-span3. also on c-span radio and c-span.org. >> now a forum on editorial cartoons and health care hosted by the roosevelt house public policy institute at hunter college in new york city. this is a little more than an hour, and we'll show you as much as we can until our live event coming up at 9:30 eastern. >> well, good evening, everyone. and i also want to just take the opportunity to welcome you here to roosevelt house. i also want to just thank a couple people very quickly. one, obviously, the hunter president, jennifer, who's been an extraordinary support of the fellowship and the program here at roosevelt house. dr. rob couldn't be with us tonight but i just with, again, want to thank her very much for

her hard work and support. and also both laura tish who funds the fellowshipping program here. it's an important addition to the new york community. this house has served as a wonderful place for intellectual discussion, debate around a whole range of social policy issues, and we're really excited you could be here with us tonight for that. you heard a lot about this house, and i just gotta tell you that, you know, when you're at home and i consider this home and you get up at 3:00 in the morning and you walk down to the third floor -- i'm sorry, the second floor, and you sit there at, you know, three in the morning and you realize this is the place where fdr conceived the social safety net and you're progressive, i've got to tell you, it just really makes you feel warm. [laughter]

and, you know, at that time, of course, the affordable care act was in the stage of being implemented, just being implemented. and as you know, many of us were concerned that people really didn't understand what they were getting. they really didn't understand what they needed, what they were getting, you know, a lot of misinformation. but what i was even more fascinated despite the clinton health care reform debate many years before was the number of people who thought this was kind of a new idea. this was something fresh and really were not clued in on the long history of health reform. now, i'm a visual learner, and, you know, a fan of political cartoons. and as i thought about them, because, you know, during the health reform debate there were lots of cartoons flying around. so i would just listen to them every day and read them and just laugh, you know, just about every day when they would come out. and as i thought about my project, it seemed to me this would be a great way to tell the story of health reform.

and, of course, decided that let's do it over the hundred years. this is not just about obamacare, this was about the whole 100-year history of health reform. so i kicked the idea around with folks like dr. jp than fenton who's the fdr visiting fellow and runs the program here and many of the senior staff who are also fans of political cartoons. and those folks, you know, kind of thought it was of of a good idea. and i had cartoons that i could show them and give them some idea what this might look like. they helped me identify our research assistants, elise berkman who aided in cataloging of the cartoons and, ultimately, ended up being a co-author as well. elise is here with us today. i also thought about, um, who might help me with the history of in this project. and, of course, i thought about immediately my good colleague ted brown who's a very active member of the american public health association and the american journal of public

health editorial board. and i knew that ted had a history of telling the story of healthy forum, particularly in the early days using political cartoons and, of course, he is an absolutely major contributor to in this work. we could not have done this without ted, i can tell you. also ted, you know, my idea was to take the cartoons and kind of just put them out in chronological order and maybe tell a little annotation after each cartoon just so that people would understand what they were like ten years before. so we go back ten years later, you look at the cartoons, you can say, oh, okay, that's what the context of the cartoons was all about. but ted said, no, no, no, what we need to do is tell a story, and we need to be storytell ors here. so we added the cartoons, ted's narrative, we thought about some of the car cartoons we were doing and really a way to tell the story. and, you know, that coupled

with, um, you know, talking to other people who were doing books that were kind of similar to this, so marion nessly, i know, is here, and she's doing a text on health and nutrition, i believe, using political cartoons. so i talked to marion on some of her experiences doing this book. i'm trying to give you an experience. everything else in public health, this was a group project. and marion helped us link with a cartoonists' group. the founder there was quite intrigued with the idea, and so they partnered with us and really applied, supplied most of the cartoons in the later part of the book. i can tell you this book has about 174 pages packed with cartoons, some images in the early part of the book from over 27 cartoonists. and by the way, at least nine of them have won the pulitzer prize.

so that was of amazing to get those, that kind of talent in this kind of book. and, of course, you're going to hear from one of these amazing cartoonists a little later in the presentation, clay bennett, who did the forward for the book. now, clay draws for the chattanooga times free press and himself was a winner of the 2002 pulitzer prize for editorial cartooning. and again, clay, thank you very much for the work that you've done on this book. so with that in mind and that introduction, i want to bring up our first speaker which is dr. ted brown, um, and ted's going to talk to us about the history of health reform. ted. >> well, thank you for coming

this evening, and i'm looking forward to trying to tell you some of this history in a very quick overview because, obviously, it's so rich and so painful at the same time that we can only get some glimpses of it. what i'd like to illustrate is that there is an important historical arc that the political cartoons will be showing can be used for as sources. they're historical sources in context that tell part of the story and that anchor part of the story. and you can see by the way the cartoons will flow by that there are recurrent themes as well as novel difficulties and challenges that arise at certain times. so let's start with this one which is the oldest his to have cartoon i am -- historical cartoon i am aware of, 1910, that talks directly about the health reform issue. it's put out by the person association for health care legislation including workman's compensation.

the meaning of the cartoon is clear. the english worker is much better protected than the american with that skimpy umbrella, and we should learn from our english compatriots so that the american worker who is chauvinistically naturally taller and more robust -- [laughter] he's been beaten down by the elements because of the lack of protection. health reform did quite well in this period from the late are 1900s into the 1910s, but then it ran into some major problems. the major problem, of course, was the first red scare that came in the wake of the russian revolution. there were other channelings, special interest -- challenges, special interest groups, the rank and file of the american medical association all of which contributed to, as you will hear soon, they became the familiar suspects. but the red scare really changed everything because now there was a ready label to condemn the efforts at creating uniform national health program, and that was it was socialized medicine, it was boll she

vissic, and that label has been attached to it almost ever since. by the 1920s and '30s, there were clear divisions in the call profession. there was a left wing and a right wig, or at least a liberal faction and a much more conservative faction. and here they are in combat in the 1-9d 30s over -- 1930s over what would be a proposal for health reform introduced by senator robert wagner, liberal democratic senator from new york who is so important for the new deal and so important in health reform. am i not projecting? usually i have to watch out that i don't blow people out of the back of the room. [laughter] i have a natural tendency without microphones to project. this cartoon is drawn by herbert locke who had a career of more than 50 year withs drawing cartoons about issues and moments in the health reform debate. and what's wonderful about this cartoon is both figures there are actually carric catures of

real persons who were central in this battle. on the right, that's isaac max ruin now, and on the left is morris fishbein and perhaps the most outspoken and negatively effective antagonist to health reform who coined some of the worst phrases to characterize it. we fast forward into the 1940s in the era in which truman is now as you heard before promoting health reform, endorsing various bills that are sent to senator wagner and his co-sponsors. now it's the even more dangerous version of the red scare. in the late '40s when we have mccarthyism, and we have the international cold war. so, of course, opponents to health reform have -- and truman's program -- use the images of the cold war to try to discount and discredit what president truman and legislative allies are trying to do. there is uncle samson, i'll call

him p you know what happens. his locks will be shorn if he doesn't wake up by those shears which are clearly labeled socialized medicine, and the person who is holding it has on his sleeve the communist hammer and sickle of the soviet union, and he is napping not realizing the headlines of the paper in his lap says russia's aim is destroy america with the vehicle of national health reform as a device to do that and to just disintegrate the fabric of the country. as a result of that, i'm going to combine a number of things in this one slide. the united states moves in the direction of some kind of national health coverage, but it was a very bizarre kind, an internationally unique kind. that is coverage through employment through collectively bargained arrangements provided by insurance agencies. the wind was taken out of the sails of some kind of uniform program, universal program that would be implemented with the government playing a critical

role. instead, lots and lots of people got health insurance through employment which was great for employees and their families and terrible when those employees retired because now they faced the increasing channelings of health care -- challenges of health care in their latter years. thames they had less -- at the same time, they had less means and health insurance which no one was willing to pick up. when some very bright person came up with the idea of medicare. we can't get universal health insurance through in this political climate, that will run into all the old weapons that have been used against us. but maybe if we tug on people's heart strings and point out to them the objective needs of the elderly, we can get uniform health care for those over 65 who qualify for social security retirement and maybe then widen it out. and here is that very ominous threat to politicians and others have to fear because the elderly, as we all know, is the best organized, most likely to

vote cohort in the population. and they use their political weight. in the 1960s battles over medicare raged similar to battles that had been raging before. and the familiar suspects were lined up left, right, center. the american medical association was till playing extremely -- still playing an extremely negative role. right-wing groups and so on, and on the other side, various progressive organizations. but there was a new element in all this, and that was that leaders of the civil rights movement in the naacp and the national medical association and the association of african-american physicians knew that hospitals and other health care institutions were incredibly badly segregated, and they saw the medicare program as a possible implement for forcing the desegregation, the integration of hospitals knowing that hospitals would be desperate for these funds, and if they put pressure on the administration -- which they

were able to do when lyndon johnson became president after kennedy's assassination -- that they would have a ready ally in the administration to hold out as carrot and stick medicare funds to force the integration of hospitals. so this was a very important new political element, and that plus the general climate of the '60s probably tipped the balance in favor of medicare. a universal form of health insurance, but for an aged cohort that made it unique in the world where there were now many universal systems but none structured this way. those that wanted to go farther saw this was the starting point and became proponents of medicare for all, single-payer. and by the '70s, this is also fast forward several years, there were leaders like teddy kennedy reflected there in what would have been the mirror of jimmy carter's cabinet pushing very hard for health reform, for universal programs which

proliferateed during the '70s. there was by the mid '70s even a program sponsored by the american medical association after its own lights, there had been one years before one sponsored by richard nixon. the so the question was not when we would get it but whether we would get a particular kind of it. then the bottom fell out. there was a major economic crisis in the '70s, stagflation, the oil embargo, and now the worry was not extending coverage to everyone, making it accessible, but can we afford it, because health care is wildly inflationary, far outpacing inflation in general, and at that time how could we imagine incurring more costs at that moment? carter began as a lukewarm supporter of international health insurance. by the middle of his administration, he began to show down and oppose it. by the end of of the administration, kennedy was challenging him for the

nomination, and so on. this is, of course, a parody of a famous ad that ran on television these days where someone looks in the mirror, and another face comes back. what could be more horrific for jimmy carter, than to have teddy kennedy looking back from his bathroom mirror? we move forward, or backward, into the reagan era. during the 1980s, that was reagan's mantra, that meant he would not support any kind of universal program. as we all know, he tried to cut the safety net. he cut medicaid, he cut food stamp programs, he tried to cut medicare. he couldn't get away with that, but he implemented new funding mechanisms -- oddly, implemented during the carter administration -- for perspective payments by drgs, and that meant that a very important dynamic set in of cost shifting so that those who were covered by health insurance in

the robust form through employment now had to take a much heavier burden to make up for the lesser revenues coming from medicare because of the payment program. that melt that health care premiums began to shoot through the roof, that employers were beginning to push back the costs onto their employees, and they'd have to dig more deeply into their pockets for co-payments and co-insurance, and it also, the combination of things, forced a lot of people out of insurance. and so we had soon a dual problem which was the problem of the covered and the problem of the up covered. by that time, this is another herb locke cartoon. he'd been cartooning about health issues for 53 years by my count at this point and every year in between. 33 million uninsured, now the number is closer to 50 million, and those who were covered spoizedly were covered in a very burdensome way with a very heavy sort of administrative burden and increasing costs, and this was not a good situation. it made health reform an issue

for the middle class and not just for those who were more vulnerable and at the bottom of the political spectrum. it led to clinton deciding that health reform was a major issue, and he ran on this as one of the prime campaign planks in his platform. got elected, we all know, had great ambitions for health reform. commission was established, hillary was the face of the commission, but the commission ran into trouble, it's safe to say that clinton's health reform for reasons we can analyze in many books about this was a colossal failure. a lot of in this fell on hillary unfairly. this cartoon is a brilliant cartoon by nick anderson which is with credit due to m.c. everybodier. it's a visual parody with all of those bizarre, surreal planes. you can't possibly move from one level to another. and as i look at it, as we say in the book, there's the images of hillary trying to find her way through the tangle of health

reform, trying to pursue staircases to nowhere. after this failure there were some attempts in the latter years of the clinton administration to do important piecemeal reforms. not so piecemeal, actually rather important like schip, for example, in the late 1990s. but not universal reform. george w. bush, of course, had other things on his plate. we don't have to go into those now. but some cynics pointed out that he suddenly got interested in medicare reform towards the end of his first term, thinking of it as a possible election issue and came up with what everyone who looks at it closely regards as a very bizarre form of medicare reform, the ped care modernization -- medicare modernization act of 2003 which in many ways is a huge giveaway to big pharma and so on. it creates medicare part d with its strange, gaping doughnut hole. that is what he did. ..

there is mccain getting a lifeline into the arms which is being sucked dry by those leeches labeled insurance industry, pharma, and hmos. that's workers perspective and i think a recently analytical accurate perspective. but barack obama, it wasn't one of his strong suits. he was outdistanced early in his primary campaigns by hillary and even by john edwards. he had to catch up.

by the time he was elected and had his two chief advisers, david axelrod and rahm emanuel, beautiful caricatures standing next to them, these acting academically, talk about the banning of the cost or. how is the message were going? what? kit here you because the messaging is being drowned out by the ominous looking machine in the back, the great noise machine from talk radio and fox news. confusion, socialism, kill granny and so on which are some for me and some new written phrases and language that have been used time and again to try to stop the road to reform. barack obama created some of his own problems. this is a very cynical cartoon about barack obama. he looks like neville chamberlain in 1938.

he is giving away czechoslovakia. little does he know that ill have to declare war because he has invaded poland nonetheless. this is appeasement to republicans or and the major form of appeasement takes the shape of the individual mandate which had been a republican idea invented by the heritage foundation, a right wing think tank in 1989 and maintained by the republicans through 2006 when he became the basis of masters reform under governor romney although seems have amnesia about that. and also incorporate the commercial insurance industry and big pharma in central roles is anything but single-payer, anything that medicare for all, and the hope is that by moving in this direction, by allowing the market and commercial interest to play such a large bowl, he will please the republicans. he will appease them and they will support his efforts. of course, none of this

happened. as it didn't happen as chamberlain wanted in 1938. he had all the problems. our guest clay bennett is the author, created this cartoon. part of the problem is democrats themselves were not acrobatically to find. they didn't coordinate their activities in some wonderful passel. they were inept and awkward, and his relations between the house and the senate were particularly difficult but it looks like harry reid is not going to catch the health reform victim. this is also the democrat did a lot of damage themselves by their failure to play the political game as it may be to play. and the end result is this. that's what some people think of the health reform of the affordable care act. there are wonderful things in it but mostly it carries over our existing bloated, ineffective him and profit driven health care system with a little bit of

cosmetic change. but, you know, the expression, you can put lipstick on a pig come you can complete that. which is what the messages here. that's not the only problem. of course, president had to face the challenges of the courts which began states attorney general and 26 states joined together to create one lawsuit that was then brought to the supreme court. it's a very peculiar supreme court as we all know, and it was there and what i would do. a g-3 moment. the obama administration had faith and seemed do confidence in the public, but in reality a lot of nervousness the courts would do exactly that, that is, hammer away at the foundation just as they were being constructed. the outcome as we all know is very surprising. this is another wonderful cartoon, and here you see the four liberal judges look with

justice roberts, who did not, voted with a conservative majority saying that the interstate commerce clause would not hold your but then turned around and said, we can hold on the basis of the tax provision of the constitution because if you don't like health insurance jafa penalty, therefore et cetera, if someone's interesting. and president obama is looking on with some curiosity, and i guess his view would be -- how would this past? this is exactly the unpredictable outcome, but it wasn't outcome which upheld the affordable care act. another decision made by the supreme court at the same time this decision was released in late june of the past summer, a very important provision. the obama administration wants to extend health insurance, health coverage to something like 20, 30 million people by

making those of the 133% of poverty eligible for extended medicaid. and providing federal funds to do most of the work for the states for the first years and then even in continuation. but the obama administration had written the affordable care act that if the state didn't agree to that it would be certain kinds of penalties. the argument against this was it was to coerce. and another decision which came down 7-2 with even justices breyer and kagan going over to the conservative side and only sotomayor and ginsberg holding out as the two minorities, saying that would be too coercive and to punitive, so states if they want to excuse -- which they didn't have to come which suddenly threw open the possibility that many states which is not the case will resist extending medicaid even if it is in their financial interest. it was more of a question of ideology that was positive

concrete benefit for their citizens. and so the real policy, and my last cartoon, is this one which the most recent in a book came out in july, 2012. nick anderson, that's the real policy of the red state, dumping the patients who should have been, would have been, under possibility of being covered by the affordable care act under medicaid extension, instead dumping them at the door of the emergency room which, of course, will have rebounding and cascading effects negatively on the whole health financing arrangements and on all of us. it's a very poor policy. thank you. [applause] >> all right. i want to warn you all that the iq level is about to plummet.

[laughter] let me -- i need some assistance here, i'm guessing. it's d.c., what can i say? [laughter] thank you. my name is clay bennett, and you know, you can talk about, but is so much better to see them in the zoo. that's why i am here. i'm an actual monkey. i actually draw editorial cartoons for living, and i was asked to give a presentation tonight, and i quote, the role of political cartooning in influencing policy and public opinion. that title seems to presume that political cartooning can

influence policy or public opinion. which i'm not so sure is the case. as much as i did every other cartoonist would like to think that we hold some great this way and profoundly affect society, i think the jury is still out on that. i do know that its popular opinion or election results are any indication, that my own effect is questionable at best. so instead of, instead of trying to prove the unprovable, i'll just talk about how editorial cartoonists try to affect the public discourse. better yet, since i can't really speak for anyone but myself, i think i'm going to limit my remarks to what i see my role as an editorial cartoonist. i'm certainly not an expert on the history or influence of the

artform in general, but in the world's most foremost authority on me. [laughter] you know, even though this book, and by extension of this event, is all about health reform in america, i'll be sharing cartoons on a range of issues. oh, sure, i could show you -- you guys are just blowing me down. [laughter] i could show you work on my health care reform was needed in the first place. you know, i could even show you cartoons about the obstacles and impediments in getting the reform passed. and i could follow those with more cartoons about the threats of repeal after the law's

passage. but i won't. i won't do any of that. what i will do is show you cartoons on many different topics, try to explain what motivates me as an editorial cartoonist, and what relative impact my work seems to have over the years. besides, if you want to look at cartoons about health care reform, by the book. so as i wrote in the foreword to this book, fair and impartial journalism will always have a special place in my heart. just not in my work. and how could it? after all, the very job description of an editorial cartoonist is to present an opinion on a political issue or current event, and to express that opinion using humor,

ridicule, exaggeration, and mockery. now, -- [laughter] you guys are laughing at dead people bobbing in a poker i just want to remind you of this. editorial cartoons are not supposed to be evenhanded. they are not supposed to be impartial. they are not supposed to be fair. which is really fortunate for me because i am none of those things. i've been drawing cartoons for the -- [laughter] i've been drawing cartoons for a little over five years now your but i've been in the business for over three decades. and although it has been a particularly great 30 years for the country, it has been a great

time to be an editorial cartoonist. over that time -- [laughter] and yes, there are eight teams. you don't need to count. over that time i've been able to force my opinions on the undeserving leaders of six different newspapers and five different states. before moving to tennessee, i worked for newspapers in pennsylvania, north carolina. i worked for two papers in florida, for decades i served as a staff cartoonist for the "christian science monitor" in boston. now, with the publication like the monitor, i concentrated exclusively on national and international issues. it was a great job. so a lot of my friends and colleagues were surprised when i left. and more than a few wondered why i would want to move from a