BROOKE GLADSTONE: Those of us who live in modern-day America sometimes reflect with something like nostalgia on America's glorious beginning – you know, the days when great men roamed the fresh new streets of our great cities, thought great thoughts and printed them in great newspapers? Well, actually, not so great newspapers, as Eric Burns proves persuasively in his new book, called Infamous Scribblers: The Founding Fathers and the Rowdy Beginnings of American Journalism. Burns is also the host of Fox News Channel's Fox News Watch, and he joins us now. Welcome to the show.

ERIC BURNS: I feel welcome, Brooke. I'm happy to be here. Thank you for having me.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: So let's talk about America's first great newspaper-generated scandal. It featured a celebrity -

ERIC BURNS: Mm-hmm [AFFIRMATIVE].

BROOKE GLADSTONE: - who the newspaper charged with acting recklessly. I'm talking, of course, about Cotton Mather.

ERIC BURNS: Cotton Mather, who was a celebrity because he was the primary religious figure not only in Boston but in Massachusetts and in the colonies at the time – he was the son of Increase Mather, who was also a famous cleric and had been, at one point, the president of Harvard. And he was also, Cotton, the author of more than 400 books. On the other side, there was James Franklin, who I think we could probably call America's first crusading journalist. He founded a paper called the New England Current. The problem, Brooke, was that he wasn't very good at picking his crusades. His first one, for instance, was against inoculation for smallpox. And because the Mathers, and other notable figures in Massachusetts, believed in it at the time, and because Franklin just had some kind of built-in, almost pre-natal, it seems, grudge against the establishment, he savaged the Mathers and everyone else who believed in inoculation. And then, when it was proven that inoculation was the cure for smallpox, he did something very modern, as a journalist. He dropped the subject.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: [LAUGHS]

ERIC BURNS: No retraction. No apology. He went on to his next crusade.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: And his next crusade eventually got him kicked off his paper.

ERIC BURNS: Well, the next crusade was actually more political in nature. He just thought that the political officials who were running Massachusetts, and they were appointed by the crown, were not doing nearly enough, for instance, to prevent the ravages of pirates along the Massachusetts shore. He didn't like the way a lot of the internal workings of the government went. And he criticized the government so much that he finally had to flee the colony. Back then, by the way, Brooke, you had to get permission from the government to start a newspaper. And James Franklin was in trouble right from the start, because he never got that permission initially.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: And so when he fled the colony, he left his print shop in the hands of his young apprentice, nine years younger than he was, his younger brother, Benjamin Franklin.

ERIC BURNS: Who he did not like at all. He probably beat Benjamin physically. We know that he would not let Ben write for the paper. As a matter of fact, Ben's first writings ever to appear in print were published under the name, in the New England Current, of "Silence Dogood," who purported to be a 60-year-old widow. Now, here's Ben, I don't know, 13, 14, 15 years old, male, writing letters as if he were a 60-year-old woman because he wanted to do anything he could to hide the real identity of the author from his brother. And he was right to do that. If his brother had known who Silence Dogood was, Ben would not have been published in the New England Current.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Benjamin Franklin was quite fond of women's names as pseudonyms, wasn't he?

ERIC BURNS: He was. He was not only Silence Dogood, but at another point he was Alice Addertongue. He was Celia Shortface.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: [LAUGHS]

ERIC BURNS: And, in fact, everyone who wrote journalism in colonial times did so under another name.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: You have a list of the names that Alexander Hamilton used.

ERIC BURNS: Yes. He was Publius, he was Pacificus, he was Catullus, he was Americanus, he was Metellus, Horatius, just to name a few. Initially, people chose pseudonyms to hide their identity, because it was just thought to be a little gauche to be expressing your opinions as crudely as so many of the founders did. To me, the most fascinating thing to consider about Infamous Scribblers is that the golden age of America's founding turned out to be the gutter age of American journalism. It took a long time for fairness to become an ideal in journalism. The greatest example of unfairness is Sam Adams. Now, as a brand of beer, Sam Adams, I guess, is one of the best. It's a - [OVERTALK]

BROOKE GLADSTONE: And as a brand of patriot, one of the best.

ERIC BURNS: Yes, because his horrible means were devoted to one of history's great ends. But consider, just as a journalist, Brooke, he wrote lies. He wrote about British soldiers in Boston sexually assaulting American women on the streets of Boston – this was before the war – because he wanted to bring war about. You would not know from his writing, but the Boston Tea Party was as much the Boston Gazette's as it was the city of Boston's. It was probably planned in the Boston Gazette offices. A lot of the – what should we call them - marauders – we shouldn't call them Indians – but the marauders who made themselves up to be Indians, they did that at the Boston Gazette. And some historians think that afterwards, after they had dumped, I think it was something like 340 barrels of tea into Boston Harbor, after that had been done, some of them went back to the Boston Gazette to have a little drink in celebration.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: We've been talking so far about patriot publishers, which were a scurrilous lot, I guess, in themselves, oftentimes. But perhaps the most fascinating and certainly the most mysterious of the publishers that you cite isn't a patriot but a determined Tory by the name of Jemmy Rivington, who spilled tons of ink excoriating George Washington.

ERIC BURNS: It was very tough to be a printer in those days who sympathized with the crown, because there was so much opposition. And people wondered how it was that he could get away with this. Now, he didn't get away with it as far as the populace was concerned. People hated his newspaper. But he was never arrested. No government officials ever came to visit him, except to browse occasionally through his bookstore in the back of his printing office. And the reason the government officials did that is that we later found out that Jemmy Rivington was a spy. And because he was so trusted by the crown, he would occasionally glean bits of military intelligence. He would write them down on sheets of paper, slip them into the pages of his books. And General Washington would occasionally send his men into Jemmy's bookstore to buy a book, and in that book would be information. We don't know the nature of it, because it has not lasted the centuries, but it could have been information that saved American lives and perhaps sped up the course of the war.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: How important do you think American newspapers were, in general, in determining the outcome of the war?

ERIC BURNS: I think they were crucial. It is not just my view. It is the view of a lot of other historians. It is also the view of the British at the times. When the war ended, several British officers were known to say, if it had not been for your newspapers, for colonial newspapers, you would not have won the war. Newspapers were a source of unity to this nation before it was a nation, at a time when it needed unity as much as it needed ammunition.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: And then after it was a nation, newspapers were a source, I think you could argue, of great disunity. In fact, later in Washington, after the revolution, the argument began over what kind of a nation to create. Two newspapers lined up as proxies in the battle between Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson, which is to say the war between the Federalists, who supported a strong central government, and the Republicans, who supported giving more power to the states.

ERIC BURNS: It's a remarkable and little-known story. Hamilton and Jefferson both served in Washington's cabinet. And it made sense for Hamilton to do so, because he was a Federalist, like Washington. It didn't make sense for Jefferson to do so, because he was the leading figure of the opposition. But he was a very famous and estimable man, so Washington appointed him secretary of state. Hamilton was secretary of the treasury, and he appropriated Treasury Department funds to start a newspaper to promote Washington's point of view. One thinks today of George Bush paying money to Armstrong Williams to do something similar. But Hamilton defended this. He said, what better use for government money than to promote the government's side of an issue, to let people know what the government thinks? All right. We'll give him a pass on that – sort of. But Jefferson appropriated – or misappropriated, I should say, State Department money to trash the very government in which he held one of the highest positions. And not only that, he helped to found the newspaper, he helped to choose the editor, and he would, Brooke, on occasion, leave the door of the State Department unlocked at night so that the editor - who was named Phillip Freneau, and was one of the most famous poets of the first century of American life -Freneau would come in at night, and Jefferson would leave drafts of documents on his desk that could be quoted out of context to make the administration look bad.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: So the history of the leak – as old as the nation itself.

ERIC BURNS: Older even than the example I just gave you. Most historians believe that George Washington invented the leak and did it the same way that it's done now. He would have some of his Cabinet officers, some of his military officials take a journalist out, give him information, and say, now, listen, you can print this, but you've got to say it this way -- this is the truth, and, P.S., print it as I tell you, and you'll get more. The problem was that leaks turned out to be like Frankenstein's monster. Once created, they could not be controlled. And therefore, a few years after Washington invented the leak, Jefferson, to use one example, was using the very same principle against him.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: In telling that fascinating and little-known tale of the two newspapers, both of which were acting as the voices of the warring factions of the administration back at the beginning of the nation, did you get a sense of deja vu? Your employer, Fox News Channel, has often been tarred with the brush of being the voice of the Bush Administration.

ERIC BURNS: It has been charged with that, yes. No one has ever gone so far as to suggest that government money is being funneled to Fox, as government money was being funneled by Jefferson and Hamilton. So I was either wise enough not to get a sense of deja vu or wise enough not to admit it to you on On the Media.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: [LAUGHS]

ERIC BURNS: Take your pick.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Eric Burns is the host of Fox News Watch on the Fox News Channel, and author of Infamous Scribblers: The Founding Fathers and Rowdy Beginnings of American Journalism. Eric, thank you very much.

ERIC BURNS: Thank you for having me, Brooke. It's been a pleasure to talk to you. [MUSIC UP AND UNDER]

BOB GARFIELD: That's it for this week's show. On the Media was produced by Megan Ryan, Tony Field, Jamie York and Mike Vuolo, and edited – by Brooke. Dylan Keefe is our technical director and Jennifer Munson our engineer. We say a sad goodbye to our fabulous interns, Mark Phillips and Anni Katz. Thank you, guys. Our webmaster is Amy Pearl.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Katya Rogers is our senior producer and John Keefe our executive producer. Bassist/composer Ben Allison wrote our theme. This is On the Media from WNYC. I'm Brooke Gladstone.

BOB GARFIELD: And I'm Bob Garfield.