Word: franklin
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
After he had run away from his apprenticeship in Boston and begun publishing his own paper, the Pennsylvania Gazette, he expressed this credo in a famous editorial, "Apology for Printers," which remains one of the best defenses of a free press. The opinions people have, Franklin wrote, are "almost as various as their faces." The job of printers is to allow people to express these differing opinions. "There would be very little printed," he noted, if publishers produced only things that offended nobody. At stake was the virtue of free expression, and Franklin summed up the Enlightenment position: "Printers...
...Franklin's nature, however, to be dogmatic or extreme about any principle; he generally gravitated toward a sensible balance. The rights of printers, he realized, were balanced by their duty to be responsible. Thus, even though printers should be free to publish offensive opinions, they should exercise discretion. "I myself have constantly refused to print anything that might countenance vice or promote immorality, though ... I might have got much money. I have also always refused to print such things as might do real injury to any person...
...such example involved a customer who asked the young printer to publish a piece in the Gazette that Franklin found "scurrilous and defamatory." In his effort to decide whether he should take the customer's money even though it violated his principles, Franklin subjected himself to the following test...
...important to remember, when people complain about the irresponsibility of the press today, that back then it was much more raucous. In the Pennsylvania Assembly election of 1764, for example, all sorts of vicious articles and pamphlets were printed attacking Franklin, who was a candidate...
...such piece, titled "What is Sauce for a Goose is also Sauce for a Gander," raked up every possible allegation against Franklin--including that he had bought his honorary degrees, sought a royal governorship and stolen his electricity experiments from others, all of which were false. It also alleged that his son William was the bastard child of a "kitchen wench," which had some truth to it. Another broadside painted him as an excitable lecher...