Patrick Henry, Benjamin Franklin and Alexander Hamilton are among the news sources interviewed by a thorough, and presumably thoroughly fictional, newspaper reporter trying to get the backstory on the US Constitution before its signing in 1787.
While Tom Farrell is collecting opinions both for the Constitution (Franklin) and against it (Henry), he is hardly a “hands off” reporter. He threatens to drag one of the delegates to Constitution Hall to fight a boycott of the final vote by some members of the convention.
I will have to go back to some of my journalism history textbooks to see if there are any anecdotes about news coverage of the Constitutional Convention, and whether they’re actually was an attempt by some delegates to prevent having a quorum for the vote. If the Press at the time did play a role in forcing the matter to a vote, I like to think it was through editorial opinion, not by the means employed in this short broadcast, taking dramatic license to get the story told in less than 15 minutes.
The 1953 radio series The American Trail was sponsored by the Ladies Auxiliary to the Veterans of Foreign Wars. I’m listening to the collection of episodes below, to see if Farrell or other fictiona journalists are used as narrators to tell the story of America’s development westward. If I find any, I will add them here.
Newspaper Heroes on the Air 