Between the Reformation and the Revolutions

Throughout the history of journalism, or journalistic media, three facts stood out: the first higher education course appeared at the Missouri School of Journalism, in Columbia, United States, in 1908; the most relevant research began to emerge in the 1940s, mainly with Harold Lasswell (Hypodermic Theory, 1948) and Claude Shannon and Warren Weaver (Mathematical Theory of Communication, 1949), all in the United States; it has become commonplace to connect the origin of the lead (the first news paragraph) to the Civil War (a North American civil conflagration that occurred from 1861 to 1865).

The contemporary development of a free, active and global press was until then attributed solely to the influence of the Industrial Revolution (from 1720, in England), the American Independence (1776, in the United States), and the French (1789-99). Therefore, from a traditionalist point of view, journalism resulted from the set of efforts and impacts caused by historical events that unfolded in England, the United States and France.

When checking between the lines of other sources, positions and findings are revealed that contradict the historical teaching that has been handed down for more than a century as a unilateral reference for the genesis of journalism, including the first research and even the conception of the lead. In this article, I intend to expose another aspect, in which journalism emerges as a result of the developments of the Protestant Reformation and not from the accepted view, linking it exclusively to the forces arising from the mentioned revolutions.

It is also necessary to clarify some terminological differences. The German-Jew Johannes Gensfleisch Gutenberg did not invent the newspaper press, but he perfected concepts that gave rise to typography. In its early days, printing presses produced books. Decades later, they began to print other types of forms. However, it is now known that print journalism was not born in the format currently known as newspapers and magazines, but in the form of a book. Thus, “print media” or “newspaper press” does not have the same meaning as “typographic press” or “literary publisher.”

Discourse Engineering

Structured on three pillars, the Theory of Discourse Engineering was born when the deterioration of journalistic practices and the way in which it impacted the democratic system were observed. To this end, understanding the concepts of “watchword,” “attributions to the another” and “boundary line” become fundamental even when faced with a historical analysis.

It is clarified here that such premises were developed in other theories. While Ernesto Laclau details the functioning of the “watchword” in the narrative framework, Chantal Mouffe scrutinizes the characteristics of the “another” in sociopolitical relations, and Boaventura Santos accurately demarcates the consequences of abyssal or boundary lines during the colonial period and how they extend to the present day. Indirectly, Tzvetan Todorov also addresses these concepts, without necessarily mentioning them.

The slogan emerges sewn into the discursive chain, capturing the public’s attention. Audiences are understood as readers, radio listeners, television viewers, internet users – navigators of the digital world. In this case, media consumers of press narratives, of journalistic production on any platform. The watchword can appear literally, as well as overlap as an ideological conception in the reports.

The apparent terrorist attack on the United States on September 11, 2001, sparked a watchword that was widely disseminated by the media, even a decade later. “It was the biggest terrorist attack in history” was overflowing from the agendas of television news programs, magazines, newspapers, radio stations and digital media as the supreme truth. The watchword is used not only to emphasize a certain point, thesis, philosophical concept, or political-partisan interest, but to summon the audiences receiving the media content, approving some and disapproving others. The watchword is embodied in the adopted editorial policy, sometimes in the form of an tips of writing, from which the employer’s guidelines present between the lines of the narratives are extracted.

If Arabs, or Palestinians, attack, and Israelis answer, it is not known for sure. Perhaps it is a correct description of events in the Middle East, or perhaps it is merely a fabrication of the international press. Absolutely certain, just the watchword projected on vehicles around the world in this constructed sequence: “Arabs attack, Israel answers.” In both of the previous examples, the press used watchwords to try to obscure understanding of other facts, making the most recent events the ideal discourse for the respective audiences. In this scenario, Holdorf asserts that “even among supposed competitors, a certain discursive harmony is commonly found, with few or rare dissonant and independent notes – dissonant in relation to the narratives whose media seek to hegemonize; independent in trying to project their discursive particularity.” In other words, corporate alliances are intertwined through discourses, without the need for legal, union, consortial, associative, or corporate amalgamations.

Commonly, the watchword is associated with passion, fascination, dazzlement, expectation, disappointment, surprise, confirmation, fear. During the pandemic, which lasted longer than expected, the passion for fear prevailed amid the “stay at home” message, even though this watchword was not used literally in journalistic texts. However, the imperative sentence insisted on calling the public to take action, to stay at home away from the risks of the mysterious coronavirus.

When summoning the audience, the watchword will either bring them closer to the Another or push them further away. Attributes with positive polarity bring audiences together with the Another, making it a Another-friend. On the other hand, audiences distance themselves from the Another-enemy due to attributes with negative polarity, which is unacceptable for the worldview perception of the press. For Holdorf, the media enunciator seeks to summon and “convince the reader of this knowledge so that he desires to approach or distance himself from the Another. After all, there is an editorial policy to be followed and it is necessary to present arguments in defense of opposing, favorable or moderate speech.” On some occasions, the Another can be just tolerable. It does not mean that it has attributes with positive polarity, but it must be supported by force of law, interests that are not always clear, and then, at the most opportune opportunity, discard it.

The narratives contain watchwords calling on audiences to accept or reject the Another. This rejection is based on the premise that there is a boundary line delimiting one side as superior to that present on the opposite side.

Powerful weapon

Contiguous to Gutenberg’s development of printing techniques, another element played a significant role in the transformations that would bring an end to the medieval world and break the bonds imposed by catholicism and allied monarchies. Without paper, there would be no press. Paper has become the most powerful instrument of institutions and individuals, whether well-intentioned or ill-intentioned.

In his narrative about the importance of paper in the invention of the printing press, Wilson Martins emphasizes the need for spiritual renewal of users, interlocutors and readers in the face of a decadent society as a factor of change and momentum for paper. Hence the consideration of paper as “the great weapon, the most dangerous, most powerful and far-reaching weapon ever invented by man.”

There was, therefore, an urgent need for a favorable environment for the establishment of printing presses. From Mainz, Germany, in 1439, workshops spread across the continent. However, the Netherlands became the main reference until the end of the 18th century. As a result of spiritual freedom, the Dutch kingdom contributed to the “democratization of culture”, according to Martins, and the exaltation of humanism, changing the European panorama in the political, economic, social, cultural and religious spheres.

Those who were distressed by the voices on paper did not remain silent. The Catholic Church tried to establish censorship, supported by the auspicious services of the state arm. Martins characterizes the “hostility against the written word” as “deep, unconscious and immortal.” It should be emphasized that censorship was not restricted to the catholic circle. Protestants reacted similarly. Jorge P. Sousa reports the decree of government regulations with the aim of regulating the flow of news, the reading of which was considered dangerous. The issuance of laws restricting free expression did not originate only in the religious sphere, but also extended to academia itself, such as the legal imposition applied by the University of Cologne, in Germany, in 1475, against the production and reading of news. Pope Alexander VI, through the Bull Intermultiplices, in 1488, established prior censorship.

Another control instrument was the “prior licensing system” for the installation of printing presses. Only individuals sympathetic to the civil and religious authorities received the so-called “public concession” to print books. After the promulgation of the Index Librorum Prohibitorum by pope Paul IV in 1559, Sousa mentions that “some of the pre-journalistic editors-typographers even died at the hands of the papist executioners because of what they wrote, such as the Italians Niccolo Franco and Annabale Capello.” The papacy’s reaction to the publications continued. In 1570, Pius V issued a document banning writers who defamed him, placing them before secular justice. Soon after, in 1572, Gregory XIII banned the production of news in Rome, punishing with death any publisher who defied the papal decree.

Despite religious and state attempts to strictly prohibit the free expression of the written or oral word, nothing could contain the desire for access to the emerging literary content that germinated from the printing presses. Martins believes that man acquired “full awareness of his spiritual strength and” threw himself “into the book as a thirsty man throws himself into water.” He sees in these individuals a “hunger for reading,” whose launch appeared at the most propitious moment in human history. Alberto Manguel mentions that Charles II of England (1660) defended Luther’s teaching, according to which “the salvation of the soul depended on each person’s ability to read the Word of God for themselves.”

If on the one hand the watchword of the political-religious discourse encouraged reading, on the other hand reading was filled with prohibitions. While some approached the Another, treating him as a friend and granting him the privileges of the same side of the boundary line, there were opponents who considered the Another as an enemy, as they believed and defended access to information as a privilege of a select group, small in number, but large and feared in power.

Pre-journalism

As early as the 16th century, reports of events called “leaflets” appeared. Sousa calls this new phenomenon “pre-journalistic,” whose period incorporated all the devices used to produce news narratives. From this perspective, journalism can be interpreted as the result of something that predates the Industrial, American, and French Revolutions.

Among the pre-journalistic devices, two stand out: leaflets and news books. The leaflets, also known as occasional, news or reports, were pamphlets sold at fairs, commonly in Genoa and Venice – in the latter it was called gazzetta, a term referring to the currency used to purchase the printed material. Sousa explains that these publications inherited different names:

“Relation, news, letter, manifest and copy (Portugal), avvisi, relazione, gazzetta, broglieti e fogli a mano (Italy), price-currents (United Kingdom), cartas nuevas (Spain), zeitungen (Germany), occasionnel (France), etc. However, nowhere did they have a regular title or periodicity. On the first page, the title of the news item to which it referred, the date and place of printing usually appeared. Some were illustrated with a xylograph. Sometimes they were bound like small books, which was justified, including due to the number of pages that some had (more than 20, reaching hundreds in some cases).”

If to some news sets determined the format of books, it is not inappropriate to affirm the existence of a journalistic “press” or “media” in the 16th century. According to Sousa, the news books or pamphlets grouped together “serious and historically valuable” information and facts of a popular and sensationalist nature. They would be equivalent to the current yearbooks or journalistic almanacs published by some communications companies, given their biannual or annual frequency. The Austrian Michael von Aitzinger (1587) is credited with pioneering news books. Na década seguinte, segundo Sousa, o pregador luterano Conrad Lautenbach lançava em Frankfurt a Historicae Relationis Complementarum (1591).

For Sousa, the concept of a news books would evolve into the 20th century yearbooks, common in the newsrooms of the largest periodicals in the West. Perhaps it is more audacious to determine that the 16th-century news books preceded the non-fiction book, just as broadsheets and business letters anticipated the arrival of standard and tabloid newspapers, despite the physical and editorial policies differences between current productions and those of half a millennium ago. 

In the form of leaflets or serials, the first newspaper appeared in 1605, in Antwerp, Belgium, under the editorship of the Jew Abraham Verhoeve. Written “in French and Flemish, publishing local, national and foreign news stories,” it became a novelty and the idea soon spread across the continent. In Frankfurt, the Deutsch Frankfurter (1615) took the lead in publishing the previous day’s news. As time passes and new research is deepened, as findings in libraries, archives, and collections are made, the names and dates of these pioneers are projected into other positions, giving way to more prominent places in recent discoveries.

Reformation

The novelty of producing information and spreading it throughout the cities, whether through leaflets and news books, or even through literature itself, did not only spread in territories under Protestant rule. Even in Italy, the printing presses caused an uproar, and the Catholic Church knew how to take advantage, censuring its antagonists and calling on its supporters.

Censorship was not restricted to catholicism or originated in the bowels of the Vatican. Protestantism realized the risks of information circulating uncontrollably. For Martins, “the Reformation, using the press as perhaps its most important and dangerous weapon, brought about the first restrictions” in Calvinist France. “A kind of prior censorship,” according to Sousa, whose account also mentions Luther praising the leaflets. Preceding “quality newspapers,” commercial letters became notable under the editorial responsibility of the Fuggers, a German family from Bavaria. These commercial leaflets reported the purchase and sale values of goods and services, the political and military scenarios, and gave opinions on the effects of any social, economic, religious, or political symptoms on business.

Despite the significance and importance of the Reformation on the European continent, the most decisive actions in favor of institutional modernization and the process of openness and freedom took place in England under Henry VIII, assisted by the reformist commoner Thomas Cromwell. According to the documentary “The Truth About Henry VIII’s Court” (2015) by Philos TV, the Act of Supremacy (1534), drafted by Cromwell and signed by Henry VIII, was the first step toward democracy. Following this royal decree, England broke away from the Vatican and the English king became the head of the Anglican Church, closing monasteries and banning all Catholic activity in the country.

It should be clarified that interference with Henry VIII did not come exclusively from the self-made-man (businessman) Cromwell, but mainly from the “evangelical mistress” Anne Boleyn, influenced by the Huguenot members of the French court, where she had lived as a lady-in-waiting to Queen Claudia. Henry VIII had six wives, the last of whom was Catherine Parr, a reformist who enjoyed discussing religious topics. Cromwell’s actions and positions also revealed his complete ideological ascendancy over a descendant of his older sister, Catherine. Although not a contemporary of his famous relative, Oliver Cromwell would initiate the downfall of absolutism in 17th-century England by establishing parliamentarianism. All these historical facts reinforced Puritan thinking and the desire to migrate to America. One cannot imagine the United States without Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn, Catherine Parr, and Thomas Cromwell. Without their role in history, the pilgrim fathers would not exist. It was under these circumstances that The Courant (1621), the first English newspaper, was born, rather than in the wake of the revolutionary industrial impact of the 18th century.

The watchword of the Lutheran world was to teach everyone to read and write, because people needed access to the Bible in order to read it. After the creation of the Society of Jesus, the Catholic Church sought to establish its watchword in the Counter-Reformation, censoring free thought, banning publications, and restricting access to information to the clergy and the noble elite, with the appropriate limits. While education was universal in the Protestant world, in catholic countries the elite financed education in schools and universities administered by the clergy.

Academic research

Going against the historical tradition of communication and the press, Eduardo Meditsch and José Marques de Melo recognize the German Tobias Peucer as the author of the first thesis on journalism published in the world. Defended in 1690 at the University of Leipzig, the research Relationes novellae (“Reports of novelties”) analyzed professional ethics and the criteria used for news development in contrast to sensationalism and commercial interests.

Surprised by Peucer’s content and approaches, Zélia Adghirni mentions the presence in the thesis of the “famous ‘six Ws’ and the ‘lead’, which has been considered an American invention.” According to Zélia, Peucer defended “the origin of this technique of opening journalistic texts” as resulting from “the rhetoric cultivated in the discourses of classical antiquity.” The six Ws – Was, Wer, Wann, Wo, Wie und (e) Warum – correspond to the basic introductory questions in straight news and feature stories – What? Who? When? Where? How? Why?. Peucer’s contemporaries, such as Fritsch, Weise, and Von Stieler, also researched the diaries and the impact of these “pre”-journalistic vehicles in Germany, 250 years before the famous Chicago School and mass communication studies.

There is no doubt that Americans have played as prominent a role as any other country in the development of journalism, academia, research, and the fight for freedom of the press. For almost a century, the dominance of American, British, and French pioneers at the forefront of the press was consolidated. If the watchword favored the roots of modern journalism resulting from the Industrial, American, and French Revolutions, research over the last quarter century has sought to cross the boundary line between research directed according to predetermined standards.

Adjusted to the Reformation

As can be seen, there is no reason to define the history of journalism solely on the basis of the impact of the revolutions that took place in England, the United States, and France. Other factors must be considered, such as the invention of printing, improvements in papermaking techniques, the impact of the Renaissance, and, above all, the upheaval caused by the Protestant Reformation, particularly the actions against the censorship rules of the Catholic Church and the right to freedom of conscience that emerged in German, Dutch, and English societies.

Furthermore, research into the phenomenon of journalism – whether in the form of leaflet, serials, or news books – and its impact on social, economic, cultural, political, and religious behavior cannot be accepted as events propagated solely in academia since the 20th century. The fact is that there is still much to be researched in order to recover this distant memory, which has been almost forgotten and little studied. Sifting through historical archives, analyzing the content of narratives, interpreting them, and contrasting them with contemporary academic productions are also part of the context of scientific research and cannot be overlooked.

As a defender of freedom and democracy, journalism undoubtedly aligned itself with many of the ideological interests championed by the Protestant Reformation. Only those who centralize power conceive of society as serving particular objectives and combat journalism, treating it as the Another-enemy to be coerced and, if possible, eliminated. The Reformation shaped a new world with the aim of allowing free access to information, especially religious literature. The conveniences that followed the reformist period adapted to journalism or turned it into an institutional weapon that served other purposes.

Ruben Dargã Holdorf, Comm.Se.D

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Original article:

https://www.scielo.org.ar/pdf/enfoques/v35n1/1669-2721-enfoques-35-01-51.pdf