Existing comment:
The Post and the Press:
The first colonial newspapers -- single sheets of paper printed on only one side -- were nailed up, or posted, in public places. They carried official decrees, court decisions, ship arrivals, a few advertisements, reprints of sermons, letters from travelers, and news of floods, storms, or piracy. Called broadsides, these papers were often printed and sold by postmasters, who usually were the first to get the news. As the colonies grew, broadsides appeared more often, first as weekly, then daily, newspapers. Printers often titled their papers The Post, The Packet, or The Courier, according to their means of delivery.
Case In Point: Freedom of Speech in the Mail:
At the beginning of the new America, nearly all the news came by mail. When the Constitution was signed, it was rushed by post riders to every town that had a printing press. And that's how the newspapers were able to bring the resounding news of how we were to govern ourselves. The newspapers knew of it first by mail.
In England, for centuries, the mail was frequently scrutinized by agents of the Crown or of the Parliament. It could be worth your life to write a letter than might be seen as having the seeds of treason. This did not happen here. From the beginning, by and large, the US mails have been free of eyes other than our own and those of the sender.
To the framers of the Constitution, the mail made the engine of democracy run -- along with the newspapers. And newspapers then printed a good deal of correspondence. Rufus Putnam, a key military figure in the Revolutionary War, said, "The knowledge diffused among the people by newspapers, by correspondence between friends" was crucial to the future of the nation. "Nothing can be more fatal to a republican government than ignorance among its citizens."
As a journalist, I have sometimes been asked where my leads for stories come from. Much of the time, they come from opening the mail. Readers from all over the country send personal stories, newspaper clippings, local court decisions, and student newspaper editorials arguing for the First Amendment rights of students. There is no other way I would have known about these stories except through the mail. It is through letters that I often receive highly confidential stories about unfairness in the justice system from people who would not trust any other form of communication.
The framers of the Constitution knew how vital the mail would be when Article I was written to protect the privacy of communications through the mail.
-- Nat Nentoff
Nat Nentoff is a columnist for the Washington Post and the Village Voice, and the author of Free Speech for Me, But not for Thee: How the Left and Right Continually Censor Each Other. |