Abraham Lincoln and the Power of the Press
720 views · Published 3 November 2014 · 6:39 · Indexed 30 October 2026
Channel: FOX 5 New York · 2014 · News & Politics
President Abraham Lincoln may very well have been the inventor of the spin zone. Lincoln wanted the press on his side so he befriended the most influential editors, all of them New Yorkers: Horace Greely of The New York Tribute, Henry Raymond of The New York Times and James Gordon Bennet of the NY Herald. In 'The War for Public Opinion: Lincoln and the Power of the Press,' author Harold Holzer writes that Lincoln had other editors thrown in jail including the editor of the New York World. "Every little town had two newspapers- one Democrat and one Republican- at each other's throats. Anyone who read descriptions of a political event would not recognize the event they attended from one newspaper to the other. People loved it. That's why they had such tremendous turnout," said Holzer.
