Recording Revolutions: Accuracy and Accountability in Eighteenth-Century Legislative Reporting

Abstract: Revolutionaries required the trust of the publics they purported to represent in the new republics of the eighteenth century. Many envisioned publicity as key to achieving this trust, but rendering government transparent in this era was challenging. Examining trust through legislative reporting, this article traces how stenography and the regular printing of often purportedly verbatim legislative debates were cast by their practitioners as establishing standards of trustworthiness, truth, accuracy, and, ultimately, as tools to guarantee accountability. As politicians working behind closed doors became increasingly suspect, journalists emerged as powerful figures in representative governments. The fact that deliberations were broadly accessible in a timely manner, and the perception of their accuracy with the adoption of stenography, changed expectations of how representatives were meant to work. Yet, despite enthusiasm for shorthand’s potential, considerable practical challenges often led to omissions and errors in deliberative records. At the same time, perhaps because of the promise of stenography as a method of accurate relay, there was (and continues to be) a degree of confidence in the records as reliable accounts of what really happened. This faith in the medium of legislative reporting contributed to the erasure of reporters’ power in politics.