Hear ye! Hear ye!

Hear ye! Hear ye!

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Wed 12 Jan 2011 11:00 PM

WikiLeaks has forever changed the way the world
reports the news-or has it? In reality, the journalist’s role of disclosing
secret documents and messages from foreign diplomats and agents is a
centuries-old practice. In this article, Sabine Eiche takes us back to the dawn
of news reporting to reveal that the men who gathered the news in the past
often worked the same way as WikiLeaks’ journalist-hackers, nosing out the
secret information that they thought would interest or amuse their patrons.
Find out why government secrets aren’t so new after all. Buona lettura!

 

Has it ever occurred to you that the privilege of
reading the news, as you’re doing now in The
Florentine, was not something you could have taken for granted if you’d
been living hundreds of years ago? Then, the news was delivered in quite a
different way, and at times to just an elite few.

 

When did it all start? Well, it seems to have been
human nature from time immemorial to crave information, regardless of whether
it came as rumour or authoritative report. We know that the ancient Romans
brought out an official publication, called the Acta Diurna, which was posted
in public places such as markets. There, whoever had learned to read found
various announcements, including ones of personal interest, like births, deaths
and marriages. In medieval times, the town crier took care of broadcasting the
news. He would routinely stop at prescribed points in the town, usually at
crossroads, and shout the news at the top of his lungs. By the later fifteenth
century, and probably even much earlier, rich people like the Fuggers of
Germany and rulers of states like the Medici of Florence had their news
delivered to them directly. In Italy, these early news reports were called avvisi, and they were dispatched from
major cities such as Milan, Venice, Florence, Rome and Naples, as well as from
other countries. Until the seventeenth century, avvisi were written by hand. Many of them have survived and are now in
manuscript collections such as those of the Vatican Library and the Florence
State Archives.

 

How was the news gathered before the era of printing
presses, telegraphs, telephones and journalists? Not surprisingly, news was
gathered where people congregated, for instance at the court or palace of a
ruler, where foreign ambassadors, agents and visitors hung around in the
antechambers, waiting for their turn to have an audience. They might spend
hours waiting, and what better way to pass the time than to gossip and exchange
and collect tidbits of information to send back home?

 

Another fruitful source of news was the headquarters
or shops of merchants in the big trading centres and ports. People looking for
news would go there, hopeful of picking up something from either foreign letters
that had arrived with shipments or other traveling merchants. The news items
would then be copied down, usually with an indication of the source-and
sometimes with a comment about its reliability. For instance, the
sixteenth-century humanist and diplomat Cosimo Bartoli, who for years was the
Medici’s agent and news-gatherer in Venice, wrote at the bottom of one batch of
avvisi that had come from Brussels,
which he was sending to the grand duke: ‘I got these avvisi from a very excitable person, but I wanted to send them all at the same,
even though I don’t believe a word of what is said.’

 

The range of topics covered in the avvisi was as wide as that covered in
any modern newspaper. There was something for every taste and interest, and
plenty that would make even your hair stand on edge. Picture the grand duke of Tuscany in February 1586, reading the following avviso: ‘[I]n Prague, a rich lady went out, ordering her servant to do
various tasks in her absence. When she came home, she found that the servant
had not done as ordered. She beat the servant, and when the servant’s young son
started bawling, she took a club and hit him over the head, killing him. Then
the rich lady was arrested and buried alive that same day.’ No doubt the grand
duke sighed with relief that he lived in civilized Florence and not in Prague, where the scales of justice seemed to tip the wrong
way.

 

Not all avvisi were so grim. Some
were distinctly hilarious. There must have been shrieks of laughter when the
grand duke and his courtiers read another avviso from Prague, which
had come in the same batch: ‘[A] young bride went to church to be married. When
she arrived, she found the church filled with 23 young men, all of whom claimed
to be her betrothed. The bride was so confused, she turned around and ran back
home.’

 

If access to avvisi had originally been limited to the ruling class, by the middle of the
sixteenth century it had become possible for private people to hire
news-gatherers. The recipient would subscribe to the news-service, and the
news-gatherer would send him avvisi based on his
interests, for instance about politics, the book trade (a very popular topic),
scientific discoveries, society gossip, miracles and monsters. Since such
private news-gatherers were usually required to pay the source for each avviso they ‘gathered,’ they had to pick and
choose what they would send on to their subscriber in order to stay within the
limits of their budget.

 

Sensation always sold well, and it wasn’t long before
things got out of hand. In 1572, the pope issued an edict prohibiting
news-gatherers (who by then were known as novellanti)
from writing news. A few novellanti had already been
hanged because ‘they write things that the pope does not like.’

 

Such threats and dangers notwithstanding, the business
of news writing continued, and by the seventeenth century single or double
sheets of the latest news were being mass printed and sold to whoever was
willing to pay. The cries of ‘Hear ye, hear ye!’ had begun.

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