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The Freedom And Impartiality Of Your Press


This past Monday was World Press Freedom Day, and the theme “Information as a Public Good” was just as relevant 250 years ago as it is today. Like her husband Jonas before her, Annapolis printer Anne Catharine Green (pictured, right) was proud to publish the weekly Maryland Gazette unconstrained by official censorship and unbeholden to powerful interests. She was free to print the news articles and public letters that she thought her informed readers would want to read and consider, and she reserved the right to turn down items that didn’t meet her editorial standards.


Jonas Green revived the Maryland Gazette in 1745 and published it for the next 22 years. During the Stamp Act crisis of 1765-66, he used the paper to criticize the British tax law and report the rise of organized opposition to it across the American colonies.

He supported the aims of the Sons of Liberty and published pieces sent by patriotic Virginians who couldn’t get them printed in Williamsburg. Green’s partner William Rind was recruited to set up a free paper (meaning free of government control) in Virginia’s capital as an alternative to the governor’s mouthpiece.


Image Caption: Jonas Green used the ominous image of a death’s head, or skull and crossbones, to help make the case that the Stamp Act threatened death to American liberty. Discovered during a 1983 archaeological excavation at the site of the Green family’s print shop, this printer’s block is now in the collection of Historic Annapolis.


When Jonas Green died in April 1767, his widow took over as head of the family’s printing business. The Maryland Gazette didn’t even skip an issue under Anne Catharine’s direction, and she completed the government printing jobs contracted by her late husband. Just as Jonas had refused to print public letters containing overly personal attacks, Mrs. Green wouldn’t publish anonymous hit pieces that put her at risk for libel suits. An author was welcome to submit letters under a pseudonym, but she wanted to know the writer’s real identity before she agreed to print them, in case someone should take offense at their content.


Two items published in the May 2, 1771 Maryland Gazette refer to the newspaper’s reputation as a free, unbiased publication and Anne Catharine Green’s policy regarding anonymous letters.


The first was by “A Friend to the Liberty of the Press” and concerned an alleged injustice committed by the legislature’s Lower House against a Mr. Chamier. In a brief prefatory remark, the author wrote, “Not doubting the Freedom and Impartiality of your Press, I flatter myself that the following Lines will appear in your Paper.” Mrs. Green might have been the actual target of the writer’s flattery, but she proved the author’s assessment of her Gazette’s reputation to be correct by printing the full piece (which runs longer than the short clip included here) as requested.

The second item was written by John Clapham, a government clerk, Anne Arundel County sheriff, Commissioner of the Paper Currency Office, and the husband of Jonas and Anne Catharine Green’s daughter Rebecca. A gentleman had approached him with a piece signed by “A Planter.” The Pennsylvania Chronicle had published it; did Clapham think the Maryland Gazette would accept it, too? He declined to offer his opinion and suggested the gentleman ask the printers directly; if they refused the piece, they would undoubtedly state their reasons why. Clapham “informed him that I had heard the late Mr. Green declare frequently, he never had published any anonymous Writing without a Knowledge of the Author,” and he supposed Mrs. Green’s policy was the same.

The gentlemen said he didn’t know the true identity of “A Planter,” but he pressed John Clapham again; would the Gazette publish the piece anyway? At this point, Clapham offered his candid opinion of the matter: the anonymous author was quite critical of the legislature, and “was I a Printer, I would not publish the Piece, unless accompanied with a List signifying for whom the Service was to be done, that in Case any Thing further was necessary I might know where to apply.” But he wasn’t a printer, and although related to the Greens by marriage, he had no stake in the family’s business. Clapham’s acquaintance shouldn’t expect to use him as a way to get around Anne Catharine Green’s editorial policies. She was free to run the paper as she saw fit, without undue influence from even a son-in-law.


You can read the May 2, 1771 issue of the Maryland Gazette starting here: https://msa.maryland.gov/megafile/msa/speccol/sc4800/sc4872/001281/html/m1281-1273.html


Glenn E. Campbell

HA Senior Historian


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