Truth-making, slavery and advertising in early Anglo-American newspapering: Publick Occurrences and the Boston News-Letter.

This article examines the origins of Anglo-North American journalism through the lens of race, slavery, and political economy by analyzing two early colonial newspapers: Benjamin Harris's *Publick Occurrences Both Forreign and Domestick* and John Campbell's *Boston News-Letter* (BNL). It argues that these newspapers were not merely partisan storytellers but active agents in shaping concepts of truth, race-making, and the economic entanglements with slavery, highlighting how White normativity and racial capitalism were foundational to early American print culture. The analysis reveals that *Publick Occurrences* promoted a White-centered notion of truth, possibly influenced by Harris’s collaboration with enslaver Cotton Mather, while the BNL’s content and advertisements—including numerous notices for enslaved Black and Indigenous people—demonstrate the newspaper’s role in sustaining racialized social orders and profiting from slavery. The article calls for a reexamination of journalism’s origin narratives to incorporate these intertwined histories of race, slavery, and media power.