click on the q&a button at the bottom of the screen and we'll get through as many as time allows. this event also has auto-generated closed captioning available depending on the version of zoom you're using you may need to enable captions yourself by clicking on the closed caption button on your screen. you can disable the captions there as well. in the chat. i'll be posting a link to purchase not exactly lying on harvard.com your purchases truly make events like tonight's possible and help ensure the future of a landmark independent bookstore. thank you all for tuning in and purchasing books from harvard bookstore. we sincerely appreciate your support now and always and finally as you have no doubt experienced in virtual gatherings technical issues may arise if they do we'll do our best to resolve them as quickly as possible. thank you for your patience and understanding and now i'm delighted to introduce tonight's speakers historian and journalist. andy tucker is the age gordon garbian professor and the director of the communications phd program at the columbia journalism school. she is also the author of froth and scum truth beauty goodness and the ax murder in america's first mass medium happily sometimes after discovering stories from the twelve generations of an american family in other works on the evolution of the conventions of truth-telling and journalism photography personal narrative and other nonfiction forms. kathy ford is an american journalism historian with research interests in democracy and the public sphere the black freedom struggle in the press the first amendment literary journalism and the history of the book and print culture. she is the associate dean of equity and inclusion in the college of social and behavioral sciences at the university of massachusetts. will be discussing andy's newest book not exactly lying fake news and fake journalism in american history long before the current preoccupation with fake news american newspapers. routinely ran stories that were not quite strictly speaking true. today a firm boundary between fact and fakery is a hallmark of journalistic practice yet for many readers and publishers across more than three centuries. this distinction has seemed slippery or even irrelevant. tucker explores how american audiences have argued over what's real and what's not and why that matters for democracy? we're so pleased to be hosting this event tonight. the digital podium is yours andy and kathy. thank you, sally. and sally andy i'm so happy to be here with you speaking about your new book. i know it you've been working on this for a while. yeah i have and i think he began working on it. you correct me if i'm wrong, but i think you began working on it before the era of social media fake news and then of course trump's use firm fake news. and so, you know, i always love to hear the story of how authors become interested in particular subjects how they turn those subjects into books. and so i'm hoping you can share with me and everyone tuning in this evening what it like how you came to this subject and what about it seem to you to be appropriate for a book? thanks, kathy, and i'm so pleased to be here with you. thank you for being here. i think i've been writing this book all my life it began. i've always been interested in journalism and the conventions that developed that made journalism be true. how journalists persuaded the public that they were telling the truth what the rules and conventions were but you can't look at the rules and convention of truth telling without also noticing how many times there is so much. that is not true. and it really struck me and when i began my first research was looking in the era of the 1830s and forties in the mass press in new york and it seemed that the press was full of stories that weren't true. but it also seen nobody cared because nobody expected them to be true and i began to wonder when did it become when did it become understood that if you opened a newspaper everything in it would be true and it didn't that wasn't that for the first. hundred years or so of american journalism. that was not the convention. so i i was i was intrigued to see the various ways that truth and fiction truth and tall tales truth and hoaxes and humbugs all mixed together tangled together and and how people responded to that. why was it they were perfectly willing to accept newspapers that had stuff in it that weren't true. we're going to come back to this humbug, but i wanted to talk a little bit about how you open the book. i found it to be intriguing so when i teach long form narratives serious nonfiction writing with the journalistic bent. i spent a lot of time with my students looking closely at the openings of some of the great works of long-form narrative. so, you know, we think hiroshima in cold blood like early some of the early works, but you know more recently, for example, we spend a lot of time looking at nicole hannah jones opening and segregation now that really spectacular long-form piece. she wrote about segregation and america the resegregation of public education in america, and so always think that the first openings like really like the best opening you do this so brilliantly and all of your work and i do think i have read all of your work. you're the opening best openings really like vivid and in compelling and nuanced ways the topic and you open with this quotation from donald trump and we he takes a credit. you know, he's not only calls the media fake. he also takes credit for turk, you know this term which you know, you make clear to all of us, you know, the fake news is not new term for with donald trump, but then you also you that you open with that quotation and then you move to the scene in the columbia journalism school where you teach and are the director of phd in communication everybody. so andy, i thought that must be really fun for you to tell a story about your own institution, but you open with the son of joseph pulitzer and the first year the school is open in 1912 talking to journalism students and talking to them about bakery in me. so just tell us about why you open there and how like how did you come to that opening? what kind of work are you expecting it to do for the book and for your own thinking about the history of fake news? all those are great questions. this is ralph pulitzer who really wanted to improve the reputation of his father's newspaper the new york world had it was in many ways a spectacular paper. it was important. it was influential. it was it was dedicated to the common good his great rival william randolph hearst also had a sensational paper, but first never had the same kind of concern for public life that that pulitzer did but pulitzer made his name doing doing news that was kind of sensational that was kind of yellow sometimes stepped over lines, and i think it was in part his remorse over the excesses that he counted us during the coverage of the spanish-american war of 1898. that made him decide he had to found a journalism school. so ralph came along the sun came along and and really wanted to to make journalism something that was respectable and reputable which is of course something that anybody teaching at the journalism school is going to admire and and value so i went i found the the of a little pamphlet 12-page pamphlet that that printed his opening statement his opening address to the to the class of 80 or in 1912. and he was so passionate about it. he was so gripping in his absolute insistence that if you are there is no such thing as harmless faking a faker is a liar and a faker a faker who commits who the point of a newspaper is to tell the truth and if you don't tell the truth you are committing a perverted and monster monstrosity and it was it was it was it was so it was so committed to to the the idea that journalism can be such a tool for wisdom and enlightenment and information and the public good and that's an idea that has become so. i don't know people are so dismissive of the whole possibility that journalism is something that is that is has honor and has no ability and has has good aspirations. i was so taken by ralph's commitment to that that seemed to place where i really needed to push and it also gave me a good place to stand to push back against here. here's trump saying i made up fake and here and and a hundred years before that. there's it was it was very much a part of the dialogue. so it was a little bit of a poke at him, too. a little bit speaking of that. what i mean because this book has been you've been researching this history for quite a while. and so, you know then along comes trump. yes, and i mean, i'm just wondering what you're react like, you know you were deep. to writing this book and and then along comes, you know a presidential administration that is demonizing the press and is using fake news in a very particular kind of way. i mean even before trump there was you know, a lot of talk of fake news and social media right and learn about the circulation of fake news through, you know, through social media sites through people. maybe bots maybe. yeah, and then your grandmother i think as you put in europe, right, but so what was it like for you as a historian as you're working on this project to go on my gosh. we are this product. i'm working on this project and now we are living in this moment where it's incredibly i mean, i think in journalism, it's always been your this topic incredibly important, but now it seems like top of mind for so many people. yeah. yeah. it was it was it was a little frightening and a little astonishing. i mean for all the reasons that many we're frightened in astonished by the trump administration, but also it seemed to take the whole idea of fakery and hackery in newspapers. it seemed to take the dismissiveness toward journalism to a place. i had i had not expected. it could go it seemed so excessive the animosity toward the press the the demonization of the press and it's in some places the response by the press. the press itself was not covering itself with glory in some areas in in the during those years, too. i i feel like you know, i was i was at a beach and a great wave was about to wash over me and you know, smash me on the sand when when i began to think about how this was a culmination of of a long history in that had just pushed farther than could have expected. well, yeah toward the end of our conversation. maybe we can return to that and and talk about. how you end how you end work very powerful ending, but but maybe to a good next move is for us to talk a little bit about the definitional challenges, right you're writing about so first of all, fake news itself. is this really slippery protein term in our own moment and it but it's all and it's also not a term that emerged de novo right during the trump era or during media era and so as you point, you know explain in the introduction, so beautifully, there's a history and us journalism from the colonial era from the very first newspaper experiences all the way up to the present moment of purposeful fakery of the spreading of untrues whether purposeful or not. and so there's just this fake news is you know, just as a hand here. it changes in news itself. what we what constitutes news what we take to be journalism and who we take to be a journalist and what we hate to be a news report all of these things change across across the us experience and so as you're dealing with this topic across different areas of press history just this definitely definitional issue. i thought how is she gonna do there you do it really well, so i thought maybe you could explain to those who are tuning in tonight a little bit about how how you define fake news variously in ways that are that are really rooted in history and and our present moment too. yeah. sure the term faking became very much a part of the debate over what journals and should be the actual word the term faking in and around the 1880s and 90s, which is one of the things that surprised me when i began my research here. was it was? before that nobody really used the term, but before that journalism was a mess and a lot of it was bad and a lot of it didn't care that it was bad and some of it was very good, but it the purpose of journalism for from up until the 1880s from the beginning in 1690 was as a consumer good that gave people lots of stuff and there weren't a lot of other outlets of print for much of that era for many people living in america in various places. so a newspaper had just lots of things in it some of them through some of them not around the 1880s 1890s you had two separate strands diverging on the one side where this sensational papers the entertainment papers the small town papers. that didn't have a lot of resources and they wanted to attract readers with whatever it took. on the other side. we're more serious newspapers who were starting to feel that they were being damaged by the reputation of these these other ones who were just you know, doing stuff and they they decided they they felt it was important to try to clean up journalism to make it fulfill the obligations and responsibilities that had been attached to it. this is where the term fake is comes into the dialogue and the the jolly papers the yellow papers. they talk about faking is something that's fun. i love to fake said some trade journals. i really love to fake. it's fun. people won't care. it gives them a better story. it doesn't hurt anybody. they'll like it. i like it. it gives me a chance to to exercise my creativity. so there's on the one in in thae in that area where they said faking is a terrible thing. and we're going to stay stamp it out. we're going to not countenance it we are going to call out newspapers that do it. so in a way professionalized objective journalism with conventions and standards and rules was born out of the response to the newspapers that faked. objectivity was invented to stamp out faking if you want to put it in simple terms. yeah, and you have you have a really interesting argument about objectivity and the present as well and we'll return to that for conversation as well. you tell some some stories in this book from the early colonial experience about benjamin harris and public occurrences and john campbell and the boston newsletter about you call it fake news, but this is you know, spreading of untruths and it's unclear and benjamin harris whether he was spreading and untruth purposefully or not, but the thing about these stories is they are they are there. these are legendary stories that anyone who teaches journalism history knows and that anyone who takes a journalism history course knows and you know those of you tuning in tonight you may or may not know about the very first newspaper benjamin harris and public occurrences, but andy story to tell about those news to me. and it's gonna forever change the way i teach the for the story of the first newspaper. so maybe you could tell us a little bit about it and and why it's you it was such a vivid way to start the once you get past the introduction in your book into you know, really laying out across a long period of time the history of fake news. this was a great story. i found too and as you say it was something i had known for years. it begins in 1690 when benjamin harris comes over from london where he has been in trouble with the religious wars in england, and he is kind of has to flee he comes to boston there have been newspapers that come on a board ship, you know people in boston have seen newspapers before but there's never been a domestically produced newspaper at home in boston the most important city of the colonies at the time and benjamin harris comes and he says i'm going to set up a newspaper. so how is he going to make people believe him. here's somebody a stranger coming to town saying i'm going to tell you the truth. well, he prints his first newspaper and he has a kind of a mission statement at the top. he says i'm going to do the following things. i'm going to give you all the news about god's providence providence, which is a very important way to think about how you look at what's newsworthy in an in a society that is deeply religiously based. i'm going to give you. nation you need so you can prosper in your businesses and that's always smart too because newspapers never flourish without the support of people with money. i'm going to find false reports. i'm going to go only to the to the sources for the best sources for my information and if i find out anything is false. i'm going to tell i'm gonna expose the tellers of the false reports and this all sounds kind of wonderfully modern and very responsible. i'm going to do these right things. i'm going to get the right news. you can trust me. he says look at look me in the eyes. you can trust me and then the first newspaper comes out and it has a bunch of stuff in it. it's got things about fires and epidemics and then you know the suicide of a melancholy widower and a piece about the king of france king louie of 14th of france. he's in trouble with his son says the newspaper because he's sleeping with his daughter at all. and this is always been seen as oh my god, it's too scandalous. this is why the newspaper was that well. no because it occurred to me to look up and see what i could find out about the king of france's daughter-in-law and much to my surprise. you didn't have one. so that was pretty clear to me that this was a piece of it was deceptive news how fake it is. i think what happened there had been a daughter-in-law who had died long ago. i think what was going on there. this is my guess because you know, i can't look into benjamin harris's head. but harris was a committed protestant louis the 14th of france was it was a papist who was had returned to the prostate the persecution of protestants. they had been on hold for a while and he was persecuting them again. i think harris found this very troubling i think harris used what is become a classic maneuver a fake news by choosing a story that sounded just plausible enough because everyone new king louie of france had been a libertine. he wasn't anymore he had married again. he was being nice, but they knew that about him they knew he was a papist they a foreign king so they were perfectly willing to believe a story that undermined his authority and made him look bad. and i think that's what benjamin harris calculated so it by looking into what was behind the story i was able to figure out that even the very first newspaper in what became america was was using this tactic. and it only made it for one issue one issue. he got stamped out and in part because it was saying rude things about a king even though he was an enemy king. he was rude he was he was a king who was appointed by divine right? he also didn't hadn't gotten permission from the authorities which was required. yeah, so everyone, you know newspaper at the very first newspapers in this country were licensed which of course, you know today is anathema can't even imagine such a thing because of the first amendment and what we understand to be a kind of you know, the prohibition against prior restraint or any kind of government interference with press. but yeah, that's not how the colonial experience and that's for sure. so i'm gonna kind of skip forward over the revolutionary period and and talk about the early republic how your book how you explore that this period of intense partisan chef in our country and which also at the same time we had deeply deeply partisan press and students always find this really interesting because so many of them certainly today. i think oh my gosh, you know, we are living it in our own period of deep polarization of deep partisan divots and a press that seems partisan as well and they're surprised to