Jefferson and the press

"With the exception of Abraham Lincoln, no president prior to the twentieth century has been more vilified by the U.S. news media than Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson and the Press: Crucible of Liberty demonstrates the power of the press in the early years of the Republic. Four-fifths of the young nation's 235 newspapers were Federalist, but, as Jerry W. Knudson explains, the minority Republican newspapers combated these odds through direct invectives and vehemently candid reportage. Concerned particularly with how these charged verbal skirmishes in the press both molded and reflected public opinion, Knudson reveals the power, abrasiveness, and polarizing effects of a free but quite partisan press as the only source of public information during the young nation's first major shift in leadership. Diverging from accepted views, Knudson frames his argument to illustrate that newspapers reached their height of influence and malevolence during Jefferon's presidency rather than that of Andrew Jackson in the 1820s and 1830s.". "Torn between England and France and rocked by domestic scandals, the American nation read accounts in Federalist papers that demonized Jefferson and in Republican papers that lauded the president's achievements. Knudson profiles the men projecting these radically different views - savvy editors who embraced their ability to channel public opinion and who often became famous personalities in their own right, including Samuel Harrison Smith of National Intelligencer in Washington, D.C., and William Duane of Philadelphia's Aurora. He shows these editors to have been sophisticated - and, at times, unscrupulous - political "scribblers" who fearlessly printed what they thought with bluntness and ferocity that might shock even twenty-first-century readers."--BOOK JACKET.