The Would-Be Founding Mother

In a series of questions and answers, Cheney took on the local press after a question about the News&Guide editorial staff’s “left-leaning” bias.

“We have media outlets in the valley that are not fair and balanced,” she said.

She blamed the newspaper’s editor. “His name is Angus,” Cheney said. Editor Angus Thuermer Jr. wrote an article last week about Cheney posting a $220 bond for the “high misdemeanor” of swearing a false oath to obtain a Wyoming resident fishing license.

“Newspapers are dying, and that’s not a bad thing,” she said. “We’re not depending on the Jackson Hole News&Guide to get the news out. We’re depending on ourselves. We’re going to go over their heads.”

--Liz Cheney, September 3, 2013

I am persuaded myself that the good sense of the people will always be found to be the best army. They may be led astray for a moment, but will soon correct themselves. The people are the only censors of their governors: and even their errors will tend to keep these to the true principles of their institution. To punish these errors too severely would be to suppress the only safeguard of the public liberty. The way to prevent these irregular interpositions of the people is to give them full information of their affairs thro' the channel of the public papers, and to contrive that those papers should penetrate the whole mass of the people. The basis of our governments being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.

--Thomas Jefferson to Edward Carrington, 16 Jan. 1787