‘Fair And Balanced’ News From The Continent

Abstract

This article considers the genre of printed news in England in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, focusing specifically on the nature of the ‘truth’ news seeks to convey. It contends that the ‘truth’ delivered by English newsprint shifts dramatically across the half-century of publication from 1580 to 1632, from a moral truth displayed through heavily editorialized narratives to a concern with what ‘really’ occurred, a picture developed through careful attention to detail. This turn to detail renders the unreliability of early modern news a critical problem for readers desperate for information on the events of the Thirty Years War. In response to this need for reliable details, readers developed new reading practices for determining credibility and creating knowledge. This article delineates these practices through a close examination of a series editorial responses to reader complaints regarding the format and presentation of news from the Continent.