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Also by Eric Burns:

Invasion Of The Mind Snatchers, June 2010
Hardcover
All the News Unfit to Print, May 2009
Hardcover
Infamous Scribblers, March 2006
Hardcover

Infamous Scribblers
Eric Burns

The Founding Fathers and the Rowdy Beginnings of American Journalism

PublicAffairs
March 2006
384 pages
ISBN: 158648334X
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction Biography

This lively, fascinating account of the surprisingly raucous journalism of the Revolutionary era-and how it helped to build a nation that has endured-offers new perspective on today's media wars

Infamous Scribblers is a perceptive and witty exploration of the most volatile period in the history of the American press. News correspondent and renonwned media historian Eric Burns tells of Ben Franklin, Alexander Hamilton and Sam Adams-the leading journalists among the Founding Fathers; of George Washington and John Adams, the leading disdainers of journalists; and Thomas Jefferson, the leading manipulator of journalists. These men and the writers who abused and praised them in print (there was, at the time, no job description of "journalist") included the incendiary James Franklin, Ben's brother and one of the first muckrakers; the high minded Thomas Paine; the hatchet man James Callender, and a rebellious crowd of propagandists, pamphleteers, and publishers. It was Washington who gave this book its title. He once wrote of his dismay at being "buffited in the public prints by a set of infamous scribblers."

The journalism of the era was often partisan, fabricated, overheated, scandalous, sensationalistic and sometimes stirring, brilliant, and indispensable. Despite its flaws-even because of some of them-the participants hashed out publicly the issues that would lead America to declare its independence and, after the war, to determine what sort of nation it would be.

About the Author
Eric Burns is the host of Fox News Channel's "Fox News Watch." A former NBC News correspondent, Burns was named one of the best writers in the history of broadcast journalism by the Washington Journalism Review. He is also an Emmy winner for media criticism. He is the author of four previous books; his The Spirits of America: A Social History of Alcohol, was named one of the best academic press volumes of 2003 by the American Library Association.

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