Newspaper control

Newspapers have a much greater importance in America than they do in Europe. You must not conclude, however, that the press is more free in the New World than in the Old. With us it is the government that watches over and controls the newspapers; in the United States, the religious sects and political parties tyrannize over the editors, who, it must be said, rather cultivate this servitude and even take advantage of it.

-- French composer Jacques Offenbach, 1876. Had he been alive to visit the United States 50 years later…well, he would have been a marvel for being so very old; but, aside from that, he could have added "department stores" and "car dealers" to his list of tyrants.

(Offenbach, by the way, was the composer of the "Can Can".)