issues, the newspaper is a public institution, has been recognized from earliest times both in this country and abroad. Although the American newspaper has at all times been a private enterprise, its public function has always been emphasized. In guaranteeing the freedom of the press, the framers of the first amendments to the Constitution realized that it is necessary in a democracy to have full information and free discussion on all questions, social, economic, and political. They believed as did Milton when he wrote, in his great defense of liberty of the press addressed to the English Parliament at the very dawn of English journalism, "Where there is much desire to learn, there of necessity must be much arguing, much writing, many opinions, for opinion in good men is but knowledge in the making."
The responsibility of the press to the public has been repeatedly emphasized. In condemning the appointment of editors to public office as a means of securing their support, Daniel Webster, in 1832, declared: "In popular governments, a free press is the most important of all agents and instruments. The conductors of the press, in popular governments, occupy a place in the social and political system of highest consequence. They wear the character of public instructors."
That the newspapers are the teachers of the people has been reiterated on the platform, in the pulpit, and in the newspapers themselves. Wendell Phillips, a generation ago, in speaking of the importance of newspapers in this country, said: "It is a momentous, yes, a fearful truth, that millions have no literature, no schools, almost no pulpit but the press. It is parent, school, college, pulpit, theatre, example, counselor, all in one. Let me make the newspapers, and I care not who makes the religion or the laws."
