"Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle. The real extent of this state of misinformation is known only to those who are in situations to confront facts within their knowledge with the lies of the day. I really look with commiseration over the great body of my fellow citizens, who, reading newspapers, live & die in the belief, that they have known something of what has been passing in the world in their time; whereas the accounts they have read in newspapers are just as true a history of any other period of the world as of the present, except that the real names of the day are affixed to their fables." | by: | Thomas Jefferson
(1743-1826), US Founding Father, drafted the Declaration of Independence, 3rd US President |
Source: | Thomas Jefferson to John Norvell, June 11, 1807,
http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?ammem/mtj:@field(DOCID+@lit(tj100173)) |
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