From the Vol.1,No.22 issue of Electronic Intelligence Weekly
This Week in History

July 29-August 4, 1735

Peter Zenger and the `Truth Defense'

This week we choose to go back to 1735, the year in which the nascent United States (then, still 13 colonies) established a principle which most Americans have come to take for granted. That principle is, that truth is a defense against the charge of criminal, or seditious, libel.

The case in question is that of John Peter Zenger, a printer in the colony of New York. There is a room named after Zenger at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., because some people indeed do understand the significance of his action. Zenger published what we would today call an "exposé" on the colonial Governor of New York in his New York Weekly Journal, and was thrown in jail as a result. The charge against him was seditious libel.

Zenger had known that this might happen. Under the oligarchical tradition which reigned in England, as on the European continent, the publication of damaging material against a representative of the monarchy was a violation of the principle of lèse majesté. If the monarchy objected, the publisher could be thrown in prison. What about the question of whether the publisher were telling the truth, or a lie? That was settled also. According to the feudal lèse majesté dictum, the more true the damaging statements were, the greater the crime!

What Peter Zenger sought to assert, went to the heart of the matter. Zenger and his lawyer argued that truth was a defense against the charge of libel. And a jury of his peers agreed with him, establishing, once and for all, the "truth defense."

What the Zenger case did was truly revolutionary, and set a precedent for the republican standard throughout the colonies: This principle—the truth defense—did not prevail in England for decades more—and is still not practiced in parts of Europe today. In Germany, for example, it is impossible (that is, illegal) to publicly accuse someone of being a Nazi, even if the content of the charge can be thoroughly proven. "The greater the truth, the greater the libel," still rules there.

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