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The newsbooks and early newspapers of the seventeenth century extolled accuracy and facts with rhetorical flair, but what they published in reality had no semblance of truth and accuracy. Newspapers peppered their pages with scandalous, often totally false accounts worthy of today’s most sensational tabloids, and\u00a0political and religious partisanship was rampant. Facts and accuracy were largely the stuff of slogans and marketing copy.
There was no defined method for professional reporting, no code of ethics, and news was often delivered by horse-drawn carriage, relayed by ships’ captains, or lifted from news sheets delivered from such places as Amsterdam, where English-language news sheets were common. Assessing the quality of incoming reports was nearly impossible, and an inaccuracy reported in one publication would eventually snake its way around Europe, thanks to the reliance on republishing to fill the news hole.
Publishers of the time were also wary of angering the ruling class and the church for fear of seeing their press carted off or smashed to pieces. As their ongoing operations depended on their being in the good graces of the Crown and the church, any publisher with a licensed press who claimed to be a dispenser of truth could be trusted to deliver only the approved version. People continued to want the facts, and, powerless to deliver them, publishers just continued to restate their claims to accuracy and factuality.
One paper, the Faithful Scout, promised to encounter falsehood with the sword of truth.” The True Informer declared that “truth is the daughter of time” and promised to sift through incoming reports because they were not \u201c to be taken or credited at the first hand .\u201d The newspaper\u00a0 Mercuruus civicus bore the subtitle \u201cTruth impartially related from thence to the whole kingdom, to\u00a0 prevent mis-information.\u201d
Readers were often left to judge the trustworthiness of a particular\u00a0 publication by the ferocity and eloquence of this editor\u2019s\u00a0 declaration of honesty and ethics, or on other more important characteristics of the time , such as whether they were catholic or protestant. One could assume the readers\u00a0 lent their loyalty\u00a0 and patronage one to a publication that reflected their points of view. In the areas of political and religion, people wanted the truth as they saw it and publication of the days were happy to oblige. In fact, the paper excelled at delivering polemical tirades.
Excerpted from page 22-23 of \u2018Regret the Error\u2019 by Craig Silverman<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"