Francis Foster

But in U.S.

law, it is absolutely still governance.

Truth is an absolute defense in this country against libel.

And that case could only have happened in New York, which really settled as New Amsterdam with the Dutch sense and the Quaker sense of, which comes from the Pennsylvanians who argued this in court.

And this defense means that you cannot be ruined by the powerful for reporting things about them, which means that suddenly journalists can hold corporations, aristocrats, the famous,

accountable in a way they never could before.

Then the next piece of the revolution happens.

when you start to apply the factory model of production to news what could what instead of having to hand print out on something a little bit better than what gutenberg offered 300 years before just 50 60 years after zenger you have these massive printing presses which become ever more efficient at the end of the 18th century deep into the 19th century where it's suddenly by the 1830s you have the penny press

entire broadsheet, some cases 52 inches wide, with pages upon pages, all available for a penny in the US.

And they are so profitable, they're employing people to translate news from overseas.

And this is where the word correspondent comes from.

So in this time period, traveling was a very big deal.

Most people did not travel far.

Now, today we have jet planes and 19-year-old illiterates Instagramming from Bali, right?

It's a different world.

But in 1791, chances that you could travel more than a dozen miles, two dozen miles, to this day, I think, to join the Travelers Club in London, in Pall Mall.

you have to say that you've traveled 400 miles from the founding stone of the club.

So even a trip across the channel to Calais, which a lot of people tried to do to join the club back in the day, didn't count.

You had to go far afield.

And 400 miles was considered to be this enormous distance.