Zenger’s Zingers
The United States was the first nation to enshrine freedom of spoken and written opinion—an inalienable right impervious to government control. But early Americans enjoyed no such liberty, subject as they were to the British government’s tight control over the press. In the early 1700s, even as Parliament was beginning to relax licensing requirements for printed materials at home and in Britain’s colonies, the crown still presumed any perceived criticism of the ruler by a publisher to be criminally seditious and punishable as a hazard to law, order, and the peace of the kingdom. Fear of harsh punishment kept all but a few of the most radical publishers, domestic and colonial, toeing the official line.
So, when on November 5, 1733, a New York City newspaper began publishing articles ridiculing that colony’s recently appointed royal governor, readers were shocked, even though many agreed with the jabs. Owner and publisher John Peter Zenger had little to do with the ’s unattributed jibes at Governor William Cosby. Zenger was fronting for a cabal led by New York Supreme Court Chief Justice Lewis Morris and James Alexander, a highly successful attorney who was the paper’s editor. Alexander, Morris, and their circle loathed Cosby, appointed by London, because of his flagrant disregard for the rule of law and his abuses of power. Besides mocking Cosby and other officials. Alexander covered local news, unheard of in an English press cowed by fear of official reprisal. As a shield against prosecution for libel, Alexander and his contributors satirized their targets, as when in early editions the called a government minister an “impudent monster in iniquity,” who might not “immediately be come at by ordinary Justice.” But “let him yet receive the Lash of Satyr… and if he has no Conscience, rouse his Fear… sting him with the Dread of Punishment, cover him with Shame, and render his Actions odious to all honest Minds, and he might be held accountable.” Never naming names, the paper ran parables, plays, and anecdotes alluding to past,
