Dr. Emily Sneff an early American historian, leading expert on the Declaration of Independence author of When the Declaration of Independence Was News spoke with the chapter about how the Declaration was disseminated through newspapers and other media during the nine-month period when it was considered breaking news.
Sneff noted that when Thomas Jefferson was preparing the first draft of the Declaration of Independence he was receiving news from about British actions against all 13 colonies. She said that helped create a sense of shared American identity among the delegates and helped ensure better buy-in from the Continental Congress for the final declaration.
The first newspaper account of the Declaration, Sneff said, came from a Philadelphia German-language newspaper. It turned out these German-language papers were the only non-English newspapers in the 13 colonies that carried news of the Declaration. The English language press began reporting about the Declaration and, as news spread outside Philadelphia, it quickly faded as other events took over the news cycle.
Once the Declaration got to England, the British newspapers made some changes, so as to not draw offense from the Crown.
“Printers used various strategies to avoid direct criticism of the king, including self-censorship, changing pronouns, and summarizing content,” Sneff said.
The royal court in France first learned about the declaration from translations of the London news reports rather than from the accredited American representative to the court. It was from these London reports that the rest of Europe also found out about the actions in Philadelphia.
The slowness of information technology of the time led to newspapers blatantly lifting reports of the Declaration from other newspapers. The “cut and paste” journalism of the time was common and accepted practice.