Misinformation
“We live in a printing age,” which was no good thing, because “every rednosed rimester is an author, every drunken mans dreame is a booke.” The invention of journalism came much later. Journalists were professional writers who could be trusted to stay on the message, since their jobs depended on it. Newspapers still had letters pages, of course, but now the ones published could be carefully chosen to reflect the views of the paper’s owner. Fortunately, we do know what early newspapers were like from their archives. I once spent a summer vacation locked into the library stacks at the university, reading early newspapers (“Just ring the bell, sir, when you’ve finished and want to get out.”) It made fascinating reading, for instance a report of the original railway trials. I was also able to note that the majority of court cases were people drunk in charge of a horse and cart. Some things never change! It was clear that a lot of the material was lifted from letters to the paper, and only a small amount was written by journalists. I can’t prove it, of course, because there are no written records, but I’d bet that the invention of writing resulted in the same sort of moaning from those in charge. It probably went along the lines of “Damn it! Any young whipper-snapper that can handle a chisel can make up stories with any moral point, and people will read them, instead of listening to proper licensed storytellers!” Come to think of it, that probably has something of the origins of graffiti too. Anyway, the moral of this story is that whenever ‘ordinary’ people get their hands of communication systems, those in power will do their best to take it away or exercise some sort of veto.
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