John Swinton, chief editorial writer at The New York Times in the 1860s and a writer and editor for The New York Sun from 1875 to 1883, wrote:

“The business of the journalists is to destroy the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to vilify, to fawn at the feet of mammon, and to sell his country and his race for his daily bread.

You know it and I know it, and what folly is this toasting an independent press? We are the tools and vassals of rich men behind the scenes.

We are the jumping jacks, they pull the strings and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities and our lives are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes.”