You know well that government always kept a kind of standing army of newswriters who, without any regard to truth or to what should be like truth, invented and put into the papers whatever might serve the [government] ministers. This suffices with the mass of the people who have no means of distinguishing the false from the true paragraphs of a newspaper.
Thomas Jefferson (1829). “Memoir, correspondence and miscellanies from the papers of Thomas Jefferson”, p.343
![You know well that government always kept a kind of standing army of newswriters who, without any regard to truth or to what should be like truth, invented and put into the papers whatever might serve the [government]](http://cdn.quoteddaily.com/images/thomas-jefferson/you-know-well-that-government-always-kept-a-kind-of-standing-army-of-newswriters-who-without-any-regard-to-truth.jpg)