Introduction

Summary

This first volume of the three-volume series Edinburgh History of the British and Irish Press 1640–2017 covers the history of the press of these nations from 1640 to 1800. We are going back in time to the very beginnings of periodical print news, yet what frequently struck me in editing the volume was just how much of this past resonates with the present. Below are some contemporaries, both modern-day and early modern, commenting on the media in their time:

we probably both agree that we’re living in an age, to a large extent, of information chaos, which is probably getting worse. (Rusbridger 2020)

It has been made a Question long agoe, whether more mischief then advantage were not occasion’d to the Christian world by the invention of Typography. (L’Estrange, A Rope for Pol, 1660, 1)

During the war … opinions were fiercely divided. Both sides were certain they were right. So, as journalists, we had to be very clear about our function. It's to give people the plain, unvarnished facts. (Simpson 2014)

Nor will [the writer] give any Comments or Conjectures of his own, but will relate only Matter of Fact; supposing other People to have Sense enough to make Reflections for themselves. (editorial message in inaugural issue of Daily Courant, 11 March 1702)

The parallels are clear and go to the heart of the media past and present. Print and the early periodical press were new, wonderful but disruptive, as is the explosion of social media and online news today. Both then and now society was in the throes of an information revolution (Sommerville 1996; Rusbridger 2018). For some people such seismic changes are extraordinarily empowering, for others, the new media landcape is threatening, dangerous and to be reined back – if possible. In such times, where consensus seems a relic of the past and the public is suspicious of what they read and hear, the news writer will often fall back on the one commodity that would appear free of manipulation and propaganda. For the BBC news editor John Simpson, it is ‘plain, unvarnished facts’, while for the editor of the first English daily of 1702 it was ‘Matter of Fact’. As C. P. Scott, the Guardian's renowned editor, wrote: ‘Comment is free, but facts are sacred’ (Manchester Guardian, 5 May 1921).