Francis Foster

They make sexual and spiritual allegations.

It's as wild as anything on the internet today.

And you combine this idea of free speech and capitalism and you get the beginning of news where you have news outlets that are only accountable to the people who pay for them.

If you start writing about things that people don't trust, don't believe, your audience goes down, and soon your printing costs are higher than your revenue, and you're out of business.

If, on the other hand, you feed your audience, you give them what they want, and hopefully give them a healthy version of what they want, your revenues will grow.

More people will buy your paper.

And this is the beginning of news.

Independent of the state, lively in its perspectives,

accountable to its readers and this idea evolves and changes over time it comes to England in Europe almost last but it it definitely flowers in the early 1600s in the in the Netherlands and in Germany and the Dutch settle and form a colony that they call New Amsterdam which is the modern city of New York

The Dutch ideas of the Rhine River tolerance come here.

And New York has been a decidedly wide open free market of ideas, opinions, and businesses for centuries as a result of the Dutch foundations of the city.

And by the way, Canal Street in downtown literally was a canal until they filled it in.

I mean, the Dutch...

Deep foundations of our culture are hidden, but still visible, especially things like, what is news?

And in the 1730s, there's a German immigrant from the Rhineland named John Peter Zenger.

And after apprenticing for a printer in Philadelphia, he moves to New York with his wife and opens a small newspaper

called the New York Journal.

And he begins publishing the news of the day.

And he publishes an account, which he says is true, of the royal governor of New York.

Remember, the Brits still rule in the 1730s, still rule New York.