How Would Today's Media Have Reported America's Founding?

I've been watching and reading about the work going on to establish a democratic government in Iraq. You know ... one day the media says things are going well, and the next they report how things are falling apart. One day the media quotes people as saying democracy will be in place in Iraq in a few months; the next day high profile commentators commiserate that it will take years. If you'll go back in history to the time when the United States of America was established, one has to wonder how our presentday media would have reported the day-to-day founding of America.

The birth date of the United States of America is generally considered to have been on July 4, 1776. That is the day a group of Americans, meeting officially in Philadelphia and representing 13 colonies, unanimously declared their independence from mother England. At that point America was fighting as a coalition of states, and they did not always agree, but they hung together lest they should hang separately. It wasn't until November, 1777, more than a year later, that the Continental Congress agreed to the Articles of Confederation, and it wasn't till four years later, in 1781, that all of the states finally signed on to that pact. Can you imagine today's embedded media reporting on the debates in each of the states as that document came into effect and was voted on.

But by the time the Articles of Confederation were officially adopted by all the states, all America had realized it was a flawed document that had to be changed. So they called a convention again and on September 28, 1787, the Continental Congress agreed upon a report to be sent to the several legislatures for adoption, or rejection. It would not become the law of the land until 9 of the 13 states adopted it. And it wasn't till July 2,
1788 - 12 years after the Declaration of Independence -- that the ninth state ratified the document and our present Constitution became the law of our land. Can you imagine how today's media would have reported all that?

This is Gordon Sawyer from a window on historic Green Street.