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The Washington Post Is Again Exaggerating to the Point of Untruthfulness


An 1762 painting of Benjamin Franklin. (Associated Printing)

Robert G. Parkinson is an assistant professor at Binghamton Academy and the author of "The Mutual Crusade: Creating Race and Nation in the American Revolution."

Last calendar week, The Mail service reported that Paul Horner, "the 38-year-sometime impresario of a Facebook faux-news empire," believes he turned the ballot in favor of Donald Trump. For many, the claim signals an alarming plow into uncharted political territory. Merely false news is part of American history. In fact, it goes dorsum to the founding of the republic.

In 1769, John Adams gleefully wrote in his diary near spending the evening occupied with "a curious employment. Cooking up Paragraphs, Articles, Occurrences etc. — working the political Engine!" Adams, along with his cousin Sam and a scattering of other Boston patriots, were planting faux and exaggerated stories meant to undermine imperial authority in Massachusetts.

Several other leaders of the American Revolution likewise attempted to manage public opinion past fabricating stories that looked like the real thing. William Livingston, then governor of New Bailiwick of jersey, secretly crafted lengthy pieces that paper publishers featured. 1, titled "The Impartial Chronicle," was anything just, claiming that the king was sending tens of thousands of strange soldiers to kill Americans.

But the most important was crafted in 1782 at a makeshift press printing in a Paris suburb. Benjamin Franklin, taking time out from his duties as American ambassador to France, concocted an entirely fake event of a real Boston newspaper, the Independent Chronicle. In it, Franklin fabricated a story allegedly from the New York borderland .

The story was gruesome: American forces had discovered numberless containing more than 700 "SCALPS from our unhappy State-folks." At that place were bags of boys', girls', soldiers and even infants' scalps, all allegedly taken by Indians in league with Rex George. In that location was likewise a note written to the tyrant king hoping he would receive these presents and "exist refreshed."

None of this was true, of class, just it struck a frightful chord. To bulldoze the point home, Franklin composed a simulated letter from a real person, naval hero John Paul Jones, that ventriloquized almost verbatim the Declaration of Independence, including the allegation toward the end of that certificate suggesting the colonies must declare independence because the king has "engage[d] savages to murder . . . caught farmers, women, and children."

Franklin sent copies of his fake newspaper to colleagues insisting, "the substance is truth." Sure enough, the story appeared in existent papers in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, New York and Rhode Island. What did those readers believe? Did they know they were being manipulated?

Franklin wrote a friend about the power of what he had merely done. "Past the press we can speak to nations," he wrote with pride. With the power of the newspaper, politicians could not simply "strike while the iron is hot," but also stoke those fires by "continual striking," Franklin wrote with a flash.

Franklin'southward batter didn't swing the Revolution. By this time, the Americans had defeated the British at Yorktown, and independence was all but secured. Only the topic of Franklin'due south gory hoax was significant: What an contained Us would practise about the people Franklin spread this untruth almost was entirely up in the air.

To be certain, many Native Americans had allied with the British and inflicted deep wounds to families across the frontier. Merely not all of them had. Franklin's lies added to the notion that all Indians were "merciless," every bit the Declaration referred to them. None of them, by that reasoning, could be Americans, even the thousands who served alongside George Washington. By the "continual striking" of that idea, Franklin'south bags of scalps obliterated such nuance. They were all enemies to the republic.

Flash forward 30 years. It is 1813, and America is again at war with Britain. The rex's men are again making alliances with native people. At the Raisin River in Michigan, a combined strength of British soldiers and natives routed the Americans, killing hundreds of Kentucky militiamen. An outraged public then adopted the rallying cry "Remember the Raisin!" for the balance of the War of 1812.

How did newspaper publishers remember the Raisin River massacre? By resurrecting Franklin's hoax. That bound, to illustrate the long roots of this terrible bloodshed, U.S. newspapers introduced a new generation to Franklin's fake bags of scalps, heating upwards the atomic number 26 again. And, again, reinforcing the idea that Indians — supposedly bloodthirsty, dangerous and in league with the British — were America's enemy.

Our own imitation news purveyor, Paul Horner, suggests that Americans today are "definitely dumber" than they used to be. Perhaps. But nosotros are not the only ones who fell for hoaxes, and American leaders — even ones nosotros revere as Founding Fathers — were not above embracing such fabrications to shape stance.

These stories from America's by, however, are not dissimilar to ones in our own time. So, as now, they were about who belongs to the republic and who does not. So, as now, they were about stirring upwards fearfulness and passions. We need to proceed cautiously. Stories that we think may vanish as a bleep in our social media news feeds may end upwards having a longer life than nosotros expect, causing more damage than we can anticipate.

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Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/fake-news-thats-a-very-old-story/2016/11/25/c8b1f3d4-b330-11e6-8616-52b15787add0_story.html

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