The Trial of Peter Zenger

In 1733, a German immigrant printer named John Peter Zenger became the unlikely champion of a free press in colonial America, not because he wrote the words that toppled the governor of New York, but because he dared to print them. Zenger's New York Weekly Journal exposed the corruption and cruelty of Governor William Cosby, and for that crime, Zenger spent nine months in a damp prison cell. The trial that followed, a proceeding so momentous it rivals only the Salem witch trials in colonial significance, asked a question that would echo through American history: can a free people speak truth to power without fear of chains? This is the true story of that trial, of the lawyers who fought secretly behind Zenger, and of a jury that dared to acquit when the entire weight of British authority demanded conviction. The case established that truth could be a defense against seditious libel, a radical idea in an age when criticizing the government was itself a crime. For anyone who believes in the power of the printed word, this is where that belief began.