Given the current state of affairs between the press and the schmucks in power, it feels like a good time to revisit a lesser-known episode from the 19th century Senate that makes today’s press-versus-politics drama look relatively polite. I came across this in my daily meanderings as an American history and government teacher.

In 1841, during a time of broadening interest in politics, Henry Clay (the bane of my APUSH students’ existence) engineered the creation of the first official Senate Reporters' Gallery: ten front-row seats directly above the presiding officer’s rostrum. It was a small but meaningful acknowledgment that the press had a role to play in a functioning democracy. Progress, right?

Not exactly. The Senate’s relationship with journalists remained deeply adversarial. Leaks were a constant headache for members, and at one point the Senate’s response to a reporter publishing confidential information wasn’t a strongly worded letter or a suspension of credentials — it was confinement. A journalist named Nugent was apparently locked in a committee room for several weeks after refusing to reveal his sources (though they let him out for meals). The Senate’s approach was essentially: sit in there and think about what you’ve done. To his credit, he apparently never gave up his source.

It was, as Senate historians note, not the last time Congress tried to dry up leaks by placing a reporter under a form of house arrest. Meanwhile, earlier in 1839, Democratic-Republican Senator John Niles of Connecticut was doing his best to block reporters from the chamber altogether, denouncing them as “miserable scribblers” making a “miserable subsistence from their vile and dirty misrepresentations” of the Senate’s work. You’ve got to appreciate a good 19th century insult.

The press prevailed, obviously…thankfully. But it has never been easy.

Screenshot below taken from www.dailypress.senate.gov/about/history/