Seeing a version of this Jefferson quote in Sullivan’s blog, I was moved to find the full text. This bit, on British hostility via their newspapers, resonates not a little with the operations of Fox News, quite functionally the propaganda arm of the Republican Party, after the loss of both Congress and the White House as a result of Republicans driving things into the ground–in effect, their own “loss of America” that somehow had to be justified.

The British government as you may naturally suppose have it much at heart to reconcile their nation to the loss of America. This is essential to the repose, perhaps even to the safety of the King & his ministers. The most effectual engines for this purpose are the public papers. You know well that that government always kept a kind of standing army of news writers who without any regard to truth, or to what should be like truth, invented & put into the papers whatever might serve the minister. This suffices with the mass of the people who have no means of distinguishing the false from the true paragraphs of a newspaper.

Some things do not change.