It’s June 19th, or the holiday Juneteenth, a mash-up between the date and the month. It marks the date in 1865 when Major General Gordon Granger came to Texas to enforce the belated news of emancipation.
There were newspapers at that time, and even with the confusion following the ending of the war, news could, and probably did, arrive much earlier. But not everyone was eager to post the change. It took more than a few days to get the word out—and enforced—across the state, but it did happen.
There were some ancient ways of getting the news out when it needed to reach a large population, beyond what could be easily conveyed by letter. Pictures carved into stone, for instance. Or the Rosetta Stone. But those meant you had to actually travel to them, rather than having the messages delivered to you. We cannot, today, understand the meaning of the Celtic stone carvings, but likely any contemporary people would know what was displayed. Perhaps “Fishing is good here.” Or “This belongs to us.” Or “We come back every autumn.”
Runners, sometimes by relay, spread important information from one official to another. As time went on, as paper became more available and more people could read, news was more widely and easily dispersed.
Newspapers, and news offices, played an important role in informing the populace, but they weren’t always timely. Newspapers that reached the western settlements were much out of date, and still they were read thoroughly and passed from hand to hand until they were worn out.
Now we have the “advantage” of the 24-hour news cycle. News from all over the world is available within reach. My phone is in my left front pocket—or I’ll be having withdrawals.
Egyptian writing and pictures
Different authors, through the centuries, have handled the mass delivery of information in different ways. Sometimes it’s by word-of-mouth, either as exchange of information or as ‘gossip’. The 19th Century author Anthony Trollope, writing mostly about London, invented his own London newspaper, The Jupiter, and carried it across his lifetime of works, available whenever political news needed to be reported. Jane Austen’s characters concerned themselves very little with the goings-on of the larger world, and they communicated personal matters, when not in person, by letter. Big Brother had the large-screen TV in every home, and other larger ones for public use. Captain James Kirk received his orders via the console and screen on the bridge of the Enterprise. And Obi-wan, and Luke, got word of the rebellion via what looked to me very like a version of a floppy disk. (Anyone else think so?)
In writing historical fiction, I’ve had to write a handful of newspaper items. I’ve prepared by reading many, many hundreds of them. And then I send them to my historian in Scotland. She sent one back with a correction: It’s very “modern” to say someone came to the scene. So I changed it to say he “arrived on the scene”, and then, to her husband’s great delight, I added a word he was taken with when he read it in 100 year old newspapers: “He arrived on the scene with great promptitude.”
In your world building, how is news spread? Will it go across the world? Is it confined locally? Who can read it? Who manipulates it? Is it reliable? Does someone or a group have an interest in spreading disinformation? Are there specialized publications? (Not necessarily papers or magazines for guilds, but perhaps for a minority population, similar to The Call newspapers.) Is any of it underground, away from official eyes? Are there competing, perhaps contradictory, publications?
Half a century ago, or more, I’d hear, “They couldn’t say it if it wasn’t true.” Even Edith Bunker thought so, rather naively. Unless everyone in the government and/or media in your fictional world is behaving with honor and honesty, I bet there’s plenty that’s put out for public consumption that isn’t totally factual and without bias. The 21st Century did not see the invention of disinformation.
Challenge: Write a news item for your world. It would likely be only a paragraph or two, but be sure you know how news is dispersed, what is standard form, and why. Painting on a cave wall? Carving in stone? Clay tablets? A broadsheet posted in the town square? A priest reading in church for the largely illiterate congregation? An actual newspaper? A futuristic version of the Internet? Match your vocabulary to the times.
If you’re feeling particularly contrary, you can write a second, opposing account on the same subject, leaving it to the intended recipient to decide which is spin.
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