02-26-2017, 08:45 AM
During the campaign, many media outlets were very far from being fair and impartial. And since he has taken office, Trump has been subjected to a barrage of negative coverage from the liberal media.
It is a incorrect to say that this treatment of the press is without precedent. To take what is possibly the most extreme example, consider the sedition act passed under President John Adams in 1798 .
It is a incorrect to say that this treatment of the press is without precedent. To take what is possibly the most extreme example, consider the sedition act passed under President John Adams in 1798 .
Quote:The act prohibited "any false, scandalous and malicious" writing or speaking against the U.S. government, the president, or either house of Congress. The language of the act specifically cited those who brought the government "into contempt or disrepute," anyone who might "excite ... the hatred of the good people of the United States," stir up "sedition," or "excite any unlawful combinations ... for opposing or resisting any law of the United States." Further, the act applied to anyone who might "aid, encourage or abet any hostile designs of any foreign nation." Violators of the Sedition Act were to be tried in federal court and could be punished by fines of up to $2,000 and imprisonment for up to two years.click
Even before 1798, Federalists had prosecuted Republican editors in state courts under the common law of seditious libel. State judges and juries, however, leaned Republican, while the federal judiciary was overwhelmingly Federalist. Under a fiercely partisan application of the Sedition Act, Federalist judges indicted fourteen Republican editors, with ten convicted and imprisoned. The United States had only about fifty Republican-leaning newspapers at the time, so this constituted a substantial portion of the Republican press.