Ben Franklin Battles Government Censorship & Cancel Culture #Free Speech, Pt. 1 of 3
How Franklin battled colonial cancel culture from both the government and society and gave us the standards for free speech and press that are under attack today.
Free speech and freedom of the press are under attack today. Elon Musk recently polled 2 million Twitter followers and discovered that 70% do not believe Twitter upholds free speech.
In contrast, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is demanding that media have a government license to practice journalism. Trudeau’s government recently denied Rebel News such as license.
This government censorship is strikingly similar to the seminal event in Ben Franklin’s life that turned him into a free speech and free press advocate, which ultimately led to the standards of free speech that have been followed for 300 years until the past few years.
At a young age, Ben Franklin witnessed government tyranny as the British authorities tried to cancel the business of his older brother, James, in 1722. When government officials in Boston didn’t like James’s newspaper, they threw him in jail for not having a government license to publish a newspaper, which was a new form of communication at the time. Newspapers were the new social media of the 1700s and would remain the dominate mass communication media until the advent of radio and TV in the 1900s.
How did Ben Franklin respond to his brother’s arrest for the crime of exercising his freedom of the speech, which was considered an English value? Though he was only 16, Benjamin took over printing his brother’s paper. Using the nickname Silence Dogood to conceal his identity, Ben published a series of essays promoting freedom of speech and freedom of the press.
“Without freedom of thought there can be no such thing as wisdom and no such thing as public liberty without freedom of speech. Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation, must begin by subduing freeness of speech, a thing terrible to public traitors,”[i] Ben published on July 9, 1722.
The government eventually freed James, published a resolution against him and attempted to control what he and others published. “Resolved, that no such weekly paper be hereafter printed or published without the same be first perused and allowed by the Secretary, as has been usual (for other papers).”[ii]
James Franklin responded by publishing his newspaper in Ben’s name instead of his own name. Ben never forgot this government censorship lesson. Considering Boston’s authorities to be too strict, Franklin moved to Philadelphia, where he published the Pennsylvania Gazette.
Knowing that the Southern colonies had few printing presses, he also published Poor Richard’s Almanac and distributed it throughout the colonies. Through his best-selling newspaper and almanac, Franklin led the newspaper industry into a golden age of communication.
Newspapers opened the colonies to knowledge about each other and played a key communication role along the road to the American Revolution.
Despite these accomplishments, Franklin also experienced societal cancel culture and censorship, which will be the subject of part 2 in this series.
[i] Ben Franklin, Silence Dogood No, 8, New England Courant, July 9, 1722, Founders Online, accessed Jan. 12, 2022, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Franklin/01-01-02-0015.
[ii] Colonial Society of New England, New England Courant Bibliographical Notes, accessed Jan. 12, 2022, https://www.colonialsociety.org/publications/301/bibliographical-notes-new-england-courant.