Red Journalism: The Allegheny Indians, Ben Franklin’s Pennsylvania Gazette, and the Ethnic Cleansing of Pennsylvania, 1747–1764

• Autores: Paul Douglas Newman
• Localización: Journalism history, ISSN 0094-7679, Vol. 45, Nº. 3, 2019, págs. 227-249
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • Benjamin Franklin “retired” from printing in 1747 but retained ownership of his press and a close working relationship with his printer, and Pennsylvania Gazette Editor David Hall. From King George’s War in 1747 through the French and Indian War, Assemblyman Franklin used his press and the Gazette to forward his political objective of militarizing the Quaker Colony. During the French and Indian War, the Gazette pioneered standards of accurate reporting relying on eyewitness accounts, multiple sourcing, and networks of information that other presses imitated. This reporting provides vivid detail of the Allegheny Indians’ successful strategy of using terror to influence Pennsylvania to sue for peace on Indian terms in 1758. At the same time, Franklin, Hall, and the Gazette moved beyond the reporting of fact and sensationalized Indian violence—not to sell papers but to militarize the colony for self-defense with fortifications, an army, and scalp bounties. The Allegheny Indians and the Gazette’s tactics both achieved their intended goals, but also carried the unintended consequence of the ethnic cleansing of Pennsylvania.