What did Thomas Jefferson say about a free press?

The subject of the press is one on which I held strong — and, I confess, sometimes conflicting — convictions throughout my life. Let me speak to them plainly. I believed a free press indispensable to republican self-government. An educated citizenry reading honest accounts of public affairs is the very foundation on which liberty rests. Yet I grew deeply disillusioned with the press as I actually found it practiced. In a letter to a correspondent seeking my advice on conducting a newspaper, I observed that the proper rule was restraining it to true facts and sound principles only — yet confessed that the reality fell grievously short: “Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle” My remedy was not censorship by government — I was firm on that. In my Second Inaugural Address, I described the great experiment: whether “freedom of discussion, unaided by power, is not sufficient for the propagation and protection of truth” — and I believed the verdict of the American people had answered that question favorably. I did allow that state laws against defamation were available to those who had time to pursue them, and that a press confined to truth needs no other legal restraint. The cure for a lying press, in my view, was never government suppression, but honest editorial courage, sound law where a private citizen chose to invoke it, and ultimately the judgment of a well-educated public.