A resurrected Ben Franklin wouldn't recognize the world Abramson describes in her NYT memoir. Once past the superficial technology aspect, he'd absolutely get Twitter and blogging and newsy partisan vehicles like Daily Kos or National Review.
He wrote under at least 14 pseudonyms (Sam Adams even more). If they were active today, they'd be anonymous Twitter accounts with huge followings that would mercilessly troll their political enemies, while issuing serious-sounding essays from slightly more respectable perches.
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The 'objective' journalism everyone talks about dates from (at the earliest) 1900. And the reasons behind it had less to do with ideals than business models: the rising consumer mass-market wanted non-partisan outlets with large urban readerships, in order to advertise to them.
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Prior to that, the vast majority of US newspapers were overtly partisan, and supported by subscription (the party leaders would direct members to buy). You can cite endless figures from the time advocating that their partisan model yielded the best political coverage.
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You cited the telegraph.The wires were the first news that wasn't overtly partisan. Why? Again, not because of ideals, but because it yielded a bigger market for their service (they could sell to both sides). Papers didn't consider news gathering a huge focus, so they signed up.
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The point is our current model sprung from a combination of business and political realities that are increasingly untrue, and are unlikely to return. People are equating the journalism they had growing up with the only version possible in a democracy, and that's just not true.
End of conversation
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My favorite fact about Ben Franklin is that he created a fake issue of a real newspaper filled with completely fabricated articles about the British allegedly scalping troops etchttps://www.google.com/amp/s/stanfordreview.org/in-defense-of-fake-news/amp/ …
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Right! Our current 'fake news' moment is *exactly* what it was like during the founding of this country and for a while after. That doesn't mean it's a good thing necessarily, but to claim the end is nigh because we have a whiff of it...well, seems a bit premature.
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My favorite negative campaign was John Adams insisting his opponent Thomas Jefferson was in fact dead.
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Then they both died on the same exact day: Independence Day.
End of conversation
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