Wednesday 05 August 2026 10:23 am

On this day: the birth of press freedom

By: Eliot Wilson

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On 5th August 1735 John Peter Zenger was acquitted of seditious libel on the basis that the criticisms of the government he has printed in The New York Weekly Journal were true. It was a judgement that established the basis of press freedom on which western democracy still depends, writes Eliot Wilson

By the end of the 17th century, freedom of the press was not a central feature of most societies. In England, the Licensing of the Press Act 1662 existed ”for preventing the frequent Abuses in printing seditious treasonable and unlicensed Bookes and Pamphlets and for regulating of Printing and Printing Presses”. The Bill of Rights 1688 referred to freedom of speech in the context of parliamentary privilege, but was silent on the press. The glue which held society together was conformity, not individual freedom.

In 1694, however, the Licensing of the Press Act expired. Although ultimate responsibility for what was said in print remained, printers no longer operated under such a closely controlled régime. The door had been forced open just an inch. And the prevailing weather in England affected the climate of its 13 North American colonies.

John Peter Zenger was a Rhinelander, born in 1697, who had crossed the Atlantic in the great Palatinate Migration of 1710. The governor of New York had pledged to find apprenticeships for all the children of Palatine refugees, and young Zenger was bound for eight years to William Bradford, the first printer in New York.

Zenger was working as a printer in New York by 1722, and three years later he became Bradford’s partner when the latter launched The New York Gazette, the city’s first newspaper. It was not very good: only two pages, poorly printed, carrying foreign news which was months out of date, state papers, lists of ships entered and cleared and a handful of advertisements. It was also studiously loyal........

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