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tv   The Promise of Independence  CSPAN  March 4, 2018 7:35pm-7:46pm EST

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>> newspapers during the 18th
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century were primarily intended to share information from the readers and keep them up with what was going on elsewhere and carry from the local area to try to help sell goods and s good ah and keep people informed. so i think the role in many ways is keeping people knowledgeable about events far away as well as local events. far away is more important because they would talk to each other on the streets to talk stk about what was going on if they lived in massachusetts was going on in pennsylvania or virginia, so it was important as a sense of information. between the french and indian war between the american revolution and the actual fight the newspapers again played an important part in letting people know what the arguments were and what the issues were and also
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getting them involved when they were mad about the taxes or other issues. the declaration was published in every newspaper that still survives from that era and thomas paine the first one was printed in the newspaper and then others were collected in the pamphlet later but that one really got people's attention because he really went after the british and said we've got to beat them. the best example of that is one of the newspapers in philadelphia.
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everything had to be sent by hand, letters have to be carved so to make it look like a tombstone is amazing somebody would go through so much effort to do that. it got people's attention. they need to take the ride stand and part of that is the result of the enlightenment but said demand was rational and reasonable and if you looked at the evidence everybody would reach the same conclusion so of
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course i am writing you are wrong so that is why the newspapers have the evidence this is what we should be doing. that doesn't sound in partial but they wouldn't necessarily see them as being opinionated, they were just showing that this is the way that it should be. you don't have editorials during the revolution. they are clearly in the editorial. there were things they wrote before editorial but they were not separated. part of that is also the result of how it functions because you don't have a publisher and editor and reporter. you have 1% or maybe two who are printing everything and they may be writing most of it. thomas wrote a lot of things for his paper but samuel adams writing things for a number of papers. free press would have been designed a little bit differently back then because it would have been community-based
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more than everybody could have the same thing. there would be towns where the majority of the population were patriots so they wouldn't allow them to print and vice versa. but it was important to be able to communicate the ideas that the community is supported. so that would be an important piece. that's one of the reasons they printed so much. there were people who have talked about the free press, but they didn't define its like we did because there were people who fled because they knew when the british took over they would be thrown in jail so they ran away. tomas was one of those and that is the way that they knew how to try to get somewhere they could publish what they thought was important. and i think that's to be honest the american revolution kind of starts us down the road more so
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than we have before because we should be able to print protests against britain. the newspapers are important for getting the people engaged in the war. the fighting went on all over the country that there were people still supporting the war even though it was miles and miles away and the newspapers played a very important part in doing that. they came out weekly or biweekly sometimes and people would want to know what's going on.
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people subscribe to them, the people who couldn't afford to subscribe to them would go to the local tavern and somebody would sit there and read it and so people would know what's going on even if they couldn't afford to subscribe to the paper. even though the wealthy people and influential are probably the ones who sparked it, the majority of the troops were not of the wealthy class and the initial fighting was done by the local militia which every member had to be so at lexington and concord that's turned out against the british and so everybody was involved in that. once they could create the continental army it was a little different. but the bulk of the soldiers are what we would call working-class people and they are not wealthy people. when the war ended i think the role of the press still keeping
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people informed in the issues about what kind of government are we going to have, how do we put all that together and there were some arguments over that because some people didn't really see a centralized national government like we ended up with. so that took a while for people to talk through and i think that the newspapers played a role in getting the debate and people thinking about it. the federalist papers are the most important writing about the constitution. they all get published individually that gets people thinking about okay, these issues of what has evolved and so forth.
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it kept people informed but also kept them engaged and interesting in the war even if it was miles away and i think that is a key piece because there were times when you think about it we had the best navy in the world.
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my name is madison and i am a carinimaharrington student am. on behalf of the faculty, staff and students at the politics of saint anthony college i would like to welcome you and thank you for joining us for this evenings event. the institute's mission is to educate, engage and empower citizens of all ages to actively produce a page in the civic and political life of their communities and strengthen

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