"The Revolutionary Evolution of the Media": Censorship and Government Control of the Growing Press – Paul S. Maxwell

“The Revolutionary Evolution of the Media” Continues

This is a book in progress … how a changing world has made media what it is today … Or, from a grunt to too much connectivity.

Go here to read the previous four chapters.

Chapter 5, Part 1

A couple of weeks ago, we chronicled the religious anarchy created by Martin Luther’s 95 Theses as the 16th Century opened. Somewhat like today, a new media changed the rules. Also like today, conflicts dominated the news.

The 16th Century had pamphlets, fliers and ineffective edicts. The Western Roman Catholic Church lost its hegemony to a splintering Protestant Reformation. At the same time, standing political and governmental standards were also under attack. Political and geographic cohesions changed as multi-ethnic and geographically diverse empires began to disintegrate. Meanwhile, some Duchies began to merge while city-states began to build firmer alliances. All because – to a great extent – news got loose. Every time one or another aspect of information changes one of the “Four C’s,” change happens to the body politic and more. Forgot those 4 C’s? Keep reading.

Here’s how it worked in 16th Century Europe:

• Shifts in content: the Bible in the local languages
• Change in the conduit: better, quicker distribution; cheap print
• Change in the consumer: this time, growing literacy
• Change in connectivity: new social aspects of Protestant churches with congregations congregating (early social media)

Here’s how it works in the 21st Century world:

• Shift in content: everything all the time everywhere
• Ubiquitous conduit (aka the Internet): access unlimited
• Consumers are everyone everywhere: growing technological sophistication
• Ubiquitous connections: growing exponentially – Facebook has more users than China has people

But let’s go back again to the 16th Century and that Catholic edict. The first lesson was that issuing edicts would do little to calm popular frenzies. Essentially, the Pope’s attempt to quell the insurrection fell flat. The media revolution that Luther ignited had already torn asunder the centrality of decision-making that had helped – in the East as well as the West – the world’s Christian churches along with their government imprimaturs dominate most religious thought. Of course, this didn’t mean the end of churches and governments attempting to reconstitute the partnerships. State religions didn’t go away, they just lost their infallibility.

(Funny, isn’t it, how allowing anyone to read the real thing changed the world? Just a thought – and a nod to Edward Snowden and Julian Assange – you might want to contemplate.)

Given the failure of edicts as a means to control popular thought, some rulers decided to fight fire with fire by trying to control the nascent press. The first to do this – some called it buying off the printers – was the newly elected Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I, son of Frederick III, who became the first ruler to engage in what was really a marketing campaign. His campaign included the printers in seven different German cities (German in language, not nation-state yet) in 1486. A couple of years later, he found the printers could bite the hand that had fed them. When Maximilian traveled to the Netherlands to quiet restless subjects he found himself under house arrest when he tried to leave Bruges. Under duress and perhaps with fingers-crossed, he signed the Treaty of Ghent and was allowed his – sort of – freedom. A major step in the history of subjects confronting rulers, Maximilian found himself on the wrong end (metaphorically) of a rotten tomato onslaught as dissidents gloated over his discomfort when the Treaty was published.

After this, Maximilian upped the stakes ordering his governments to publish just about every dictation, new rule, treaties, taxes, good news and more. In short order, government became the economic lifeblood of the printing industry.

As the end of the 15th Century approached, France found itself as an emerging power after the English had been sent back to their island. With the English banished to their side of the Channel, Charles VIII presided over an expanded geography and, ever the promoter, set his sight on the Kingdom of Naples. At this time, Italy was a politically fractured peninsula, home of Machiavelli and many city-states. Charles VIII took advantage of a thriving Paris printing industry and a collection of intellectuals who wrote pamphlets, songs and even plays staging them in every significant city. He paid them all to trumpet, sing and chant his successes in every medium extant: print, song sheets, concerts and plays.

As Charles VIII invaded the peninsula he sent back copy to Lyon and Paris lauding his every victory and movement forward. Printers in both Lyon and Paris produced the pamphlets. Paris was inundated by print when Charles met with the Pope in Rome and then was crowned King of Naples.

In 1498, Louis XII inherited his father’s throne and his Italian possessions. Seven years later he had to suppress a revolution in Genoa and then two years later he humiliated Venice.

That led to a real feud between Louis and the warrior-Pope Julian II. The feud would be familiar today as it devolved into personal vitriol in print … and even on the stage. A French playwright wrote and staged “The Game of the Prince of Fools and his Idiot Mother.”

Next week: Chapter 5, Part 2 – The Long Run-Up to Nation-States

In an almost 50-year career writing and reporting on media, Paul S. Maxwell started and/or ran some 45-plus publications ranging from CATV Newsweekly to Colorado Magazine to CableVision to Multichannel News to CableFAX and The BRIDGE Suite of daily newsletters and research publications. In between publishing stints, Maxwell served as an advisor and/or consultant to a number of major media companies and media start-ups including running a unit of MCI and managing a partnership of TCI and McGraw-Hill.

Send any and all criticisms, suggestions, rants, threats, corrections, etc. to him at cablemax@mac.com. He has a new Web site coming soon!

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