Freedom of the Press - Story of Andrew Hamilton

The Freedom of the Press with Raymond Edward Johnson as Andrew Hamilton on WWII Armed Forces Radio.

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"I've got a story I want you to hear. A story that's important to you overseas and me on the home front. This is why I think it's important. You know that in the United States you can walk to the corner newspaper stand and make your own choice of various newspapers. You know too that they are likely to disagree with each other in their views and some of them are likely to disagree with the administration in power. We take that for granted. Still you don't get arrested for buying the paper you want and no publisher gets arrested for printing it. Even in the midst of a tough war we allow so much freedom of criticism that sometimes it worries people from other countries but we know it's our strength. Better to allow this freedom... better to allow it to be abused at times than to let one group of people decide what should be printed and what we should think. We've seen where that can land... in Germany and Japan."

"Now this particular freedom wasn't won in America without some pretty hard fights. This is a story of one of the most crucial and important of those struggles."

Andrew Hamilton was a Scottish lawyer in the Thirteen Colonies, where he finally settled in Philadelphia. He was best known for his legal victory on behalf of the printer and newspaper publisher John Peter Zenger. His involvement with the 1735 decision in New York helped to establish that truth is a defense to an accusation of libel. His eloquent defense concluded with saying that the press has "a liberty both of exposing and opposing tyrannical power by speaking and writing truth."

His success in this case has been said to have inspired the now-archaic term "Philadelphia lawyer", meaning a particularly adept and clever attorney, as in "It would take a Philadelphia lawyer to get him off." His estate in Philadelphia, known as Bush Hill, was inherited by his son, William Hamilton, who leased it for use as the vice-president's house during the years that the city was the temporary capital of the United States. (Wikipedia)

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