In an age of deepfakes, viral misinformation, and coordinated disinformation campaigns, it’s tempting to believe we are living through something entirely new — a moment when truth itself feels fragile and the line between fact and fiction has never been blurrier. But as Utah Valley University history professor Greg Jackson argues in his new book, “Been There, Done That: How Our History Shows What We Can Overcome,” the impulse to invent, exaggerate, and weaponize news is as old as the United States itself. Consider Benjamin Franklin, of all people. In 1782, following the American Revolution and the decisive victory at Yorktown, Franklin was in France negotiating peace with Great Britain. He had handed over some notes to one of the king’s negotiators, but he had accidentally left out the pages that mentioned patriot seizures of British loyalist property — an omission that could have seriously weakened America’s bargaining position. To regain the upper hand, the former newspaperman turned to his printing press and let his imagination run wild. He manufactured a story claiming that captured British soldiers had been found carrying scalps of American soldiers, small children, and ordinary civilians. It was entirely fabricated. To make it believable, he dressed it up to look as if it had come from a real Boston newspaper, complete with phony advertisements. The story was picked up by the British press and spread as truth. Franklin, the man synonymous with wisdom, self-improvement, and the Enlightenment, was knowingly printing fake news to win a diplomatic advantage.
Franklin’s deception might seem like a charming historical footnote, but Jackson believes it carries a profound lesson for Americans today. Fake news, he says, has always been there. Disinformation has always been there. That may sound pessimistic, but Jackson frames it as a kind of liberation: we are not facing an unprecedented catastrophe; we are participating in a long, messy human tradition. The real question is what we do about it. Jackson’s answer is rooted in his faith in the American experiment. If we truly believe in government by the people, he argues, then we have to trust that ordinary citizens — even when they are misled, confused, or deceived — will, over time, find their way to the truth. That doesn’t mean being passive. It means doing the hard, unglamorous work of paying attention, questioning what we read, and holding both media and ourselves to a higher standard. Jefferson, after all, complained that there had never been worse or more egregious newspapers than the ones published during his presidency, remarking that a man would be more informed by not reading the newspaper at all. And yet, Jefferson also believed that the people, not a magistrate or a censor, should be trusted to discern truth from falsehood. That tension — disgust with the press but faith in the public — is woven throughout American history, and Jackson wants us to embrace it rather than despair over it.
The “golden age” of fake news, Jackson writes, came in the late 1800s, when New York City was home to fierce newspaper wars between Joseph Pulitzer’s “The World” and William Randolph Hearst’s “Morning Journal.” The arrival of faster, cheaper printing presses allowed publishers to experiment with color, bold fonts, and dramatic layouts, giving birth to yellow journalism — a style built on sensationalism, exaggeration, and, at times, outright lies. In the middle of this chaos stood “The New York Times,” which was nearly dead, down to only about 9,000 subscribers. A famous 1894 cartoon in Puck Magazine captures the moment perfectly: a man in a bowler hat is running with a newspaper in his hand, and the paper has just two words on it: “fake news.” So the phrase itself is more than a century old. But here is what Jackson finds so instructive: “The New York Times” didn’t stay dead. It reinvented itself by lowering its price to a penny so it could compete with the yellow journals. And in doing so, it discovered something important — people really do want the news. They really do want facts. The paper roared back to life. Meanwhile, of those three papers, “The New York Times” is the only one that persists; “The World” is no more. For Jackson, the parallel to our own moment is striking. Social media and artificial intelligence are the new disruptive technologies, lowering the barrier to entry and inviting just about anyone to become a publisher. That can be chaotic and dangerous. But Jackson believes that good journalism can still win out if it is accessible, affordable, and committed to facts. The technology may change, but the hunger for reliable information does not.
So what can ordinary people learn from these historical examples? Jackson’s first piece of advice is simple: stop telling yourself this is new. Stop treating the present moment as some unprecedented challenge that no generation has ever faced. Every generation of Americans has had to navigate bad information, partisan spin, and outright lies. That is part of the hard work of citizenship in a republic. If this task feels exhausting, that’s because it is — but it has always been exhausting. Jackson reminds us that Thomas Jefferson himself felt besieged by the press, convinced that American newspapers had never been worse or more malicious. Yet Jefferson never concluded that the solution was to let the government control the news. Instead, he placed his faith in the people, insisting that a free society is best served not by authority but by the collective judgment of its citizens. That means each of us has to practice discernment. Jackson suggests that we curate our own list of trusted news outlets and journals, the sources we know are serious, accurate, and fair. But he acknowledges that this is easier said than done. Algorithms push outrage, social media rewards the most extreme voices, and the sheer number of places to turn can feel overwhelming. It is tempting to throw up our hands and retreat into cynicism, assuming that nothing is true and nobody can be trusted. But Jackson’s history is a counterargument to that surrender. If you want to be a citizen, not just a consumer, curation is not optional. It is core to the entire American project.
Jackson offers a memorable analogy for the modern information environment: the information highway. Yes, there are McDonalds and Wendys everywhere. Yes, there are countless fast-food stops along the road, each one tempting us with something cheap, colorful, and satisfying in the moment. But that doesn’t mean we have to stop at every single one, buy a shake, order a side of fries, and make that our daily diet. We know that some places are occasional indulgences and other places are where we get our actual nutrition. Jackson argues that we should treat news the same way. There is nothing wrong with occasionally reading something sensational or entertaining, but it should not be the place we go to nourish our understanding of the world. He also reminds us that algorithms, though they feel new and sinister, are not entirely foreign to human experience. Imagine being an ordinary person in New York City in the 1890s. You are just trying to walk down the street, and newsboys are everywhere, shouting “Extra, extra, read all about it!” You have the morning edition, the afternoon edition, the evening edition, the extra edition, and the Sunday edition, which can run more than a hundred pages. They are literally chasing people down the sidewalk, berating them to buy the paper. There has been a 24-hour news cycle for more than a century. The formats change, but the pressure never stops. And in every era, Jackson says, it has been up to us to decide what we put into our heads just as carefully as we decide what we put into our bodies.
In the end, Jackson’s book is not a doom-and-gloom warning. It is a hopeful reminder that we have been through this before and survived. Benjamin Franklin’s counterfeit newspaper article did not destroy the American republic; it was a cunning move in a high-stakes negotiation, but the country endured. Yellow journalism nearly killed one of the greatest newspapers in the world, but “The New York Times” found its way back by betting on facts. Jefferson fumed about the media of his day, yet he still believed in the wisdom of ordinary people. Fake news is not a bug that can be permanently fixed; it is a recurring challenge that tests every generation. But Jackson’s deepest conviction is that we can overcome it if we do our part. If we really believe in the American experiment, if we really believe in government by the people, then we have to trust that even when we get it wrong today, the American people, in the long run, will get it right. That is not naive optimism; it is a call to action. It asks us to be readers before we are sharers, to be thinkers before we are believers, and to be citizens before we are consumers. The news may be messy, the algorithms may be relentless, and the next fake story is probably already making its way around the internet. But history shows we have faced this before — and history shows we can face it again.