A journalist is a grumbler, a censurer, a giver of advice, a regent of sovereigns, a tutor of nations. Four hostile newspapers are more to be feared than an hundred thousand bayonets.

Appears to be fabricated as it is not known from surviving print before 19 March 1845 when it appeared in Mississippi Democrat in an article titled 'The Press' and in The North-Carolina Standard on its own as a column filler. On April 17, 1845 a longer version of "The Press" article appeared in The Guard (Holly Springs, Miss.) crediting the article to the New Orleans Jeffersonian, a newspaper edited by Col J F H Claiborne (Life of Col. J.F.H. Claiborne by Franklin L. Riley, P. 232). Claiborne was also a US congressman and "ranked among the most eloquent orators of the House of Representatives" (ibid P.221). It is known he was in agreement with the sentiment of the quote having said, "The journalist has a grander mission, and if conscientiously pursued, it is the highest and noblest of all avocations" (ibid P. 228). The relevant issue of the Jeffersonian does not appear to have survived but is possibly the original source of the invented quote. Claiborne again uses the "quote" in 1846 i