Some readers will recognize Eric Burns as the whimsical and friendly host of Fox News Watch (in my book, the only program worth watching on Fox News Channel). Many will not realize that Burns comes to his job with some significant honors, including Washington Journalism Review naming him one of the best writers in the history of broadcast journalism. He has written several previous books, but more about that later.

Early Mormon history is filled with examples of the press taking a generally negative view of Mormonism in general and Joseph Smith in particular. They savagely attacked the Book of Mormon, and some even gladly hailed the deaths of Joseph and Hyrum as the end of the Mormon movement. They were, of course, wrong. Critics of the early press insist that, had they taken the time to learn the facts, they would not have been so critical and would have had a more favorable view of the Mormons.

I suspect Eric Burns would say "Ha!" to such a notion. Any idea that the early American press desired fairness and accuracy displays a lack of understanding of how journalism began in our nation. In this wonderfully readable and lively book, Burns takes us on a tour of the men who launched the journalistic effort in the Colonies, men who sometimes cared less for accuracy than in advancing a particular agenda.

Some may insist, "Sigh, things haven't changed much, have they?" And, to a degree, we can still see bias, both left and right, in the press. But what we see today pales in comparison to the sometimes vicious, and often amusing, broadsides of America's early journalists.

Part of the fun of this book is that you get to go behind the scenes and see what was involved in early printing -- the tedious typesetting, inking, hanging sheets to dry, etc. Oh, what would Ben Franklin have given for a word processor and a laser printer! One might wonder why folks would go to all the trouble to work so hard to, at times, present a single sheet filled with news that might be as much as a year old! Why bother?

The passion for writing and publishing can overcome any obstacle, and these people had something to say. At times, even our greatest statesmen used the press to attack each other in sometimes graphic language, a tactic that, even in these volatile times, would be considered shocking. But, in early America, there were no standards for either fairness or accuracy. And as Burns takes us from colonial times, through the American revolution, and into the "tumult of peace," we see this passion for opining in even greater measure.

Knowing this history, it becomes a bit easier to understand why the press's attacks on Joseph Smith and Mormonism were not considered so out of character with the journalistic enterprise. Of course, by the time we get to the 1830's, methods of printing had advanced to the point where the process of producing a newspaper was less tedious, and thus more pervasive. More newspapers are appearing, more opinions are being voiced (both informed and otherwise), and all the while history seems to be able to find its way through the muck.

Perhaps the sense of the times is best expressed in a poem Burns reproduces, first appearing in The Connecticut Bee in 1800:

Here various news we tell, of love and strife,
Of peace and war, health and sickness, death and life,
Of loss and gain, of famine and of store,
Of storms at sea, and travels on the shore,
Of prodigies, and portents seen in air,
Of fires, and plagues, and stars with blazing hair,
Of turns of fortune, changes in the state,
The fall of fav'rites, projects of the great,
Of old mismanagements, taxations new,
All neither wholly false, nor wholly true. (p. 14)

And there you have it -- a blunt admission that at least this particular journalistic effort is more about sensationalism and less about accuracy, meant to titillate and not necessarily inform. And so it goes.

As to Burns' other books, one deals with the social history of tobacco, the other with the social history of alcohol. I'd love to read these -- perhaps they will shed some additional light on the use of both in early Mormonism, and their eventual prohibition in the Word of Wisdom (although not entirely so during Joseph's lifetime).

Infamous Scribblers fills in an important gap in the history of our nation, and one that does not receive the attention it truly deserves. I thoroughly enjoyed the book, and think you will, too.

-----------------------------------

Jeffrey Needle
May 29, 2006