"THE PRESS.”

Timaru Herald, Volume XCVIII, Issue 18084, 11 June 1924, Page 14 (Supplement)

"THE PRESS.”

STRENUOUS FIGHT FOR FREEDOM

We are told that it is not easy to trace the origin of the newspaper press, but it is clear that analogies in the Roman “Acta Diurna,” or the Venetian. “Gazettas” are very remote, hardly less so than the old English news-let-ters of the 16th Century. It was the invention of printing and the more or less accidental removal of restrictions on the liberty of the Press that favoured the growth of the modern newspaper, and the public spirit and enterprise of the British people entitle them to claim the honour of originating the publication of the newspaper as it is to-day. But the “Acta Diurna,” or daily Roman, the origin of which is ascribed to Julius Caesar, contained much the same class of matter as is to be found in the modern newspaper, if reports of football and cricket matches and horse racing be substituted for reports of gladiatorial combats, and for parliamentary news the notices of the plediscita of the Comitia. According to Cicero, Petronius and other writers, the “Acta Diurna” published an account of anything worthy of note.

Charles Pebody, in his “History, of English Journalism,” records that the republic of St. Mark had its newspaper, and that it iss very probable we borrowed, if not the idea of a newspaper, many of the terms in familiar use to-day in connection with the newspaper, from the Venetians. For instancse the word “gazette” is said to have been derived from the name of the coin charged for the news sheet. Lord Burleigh is credited with having published the first English newspaper in 1588—a notification that the Spanish Armada was about to invade England. But Nathaniel Butler is credited with having been the first man to print all the news of the day upon a single sheet in a weekly publication with a distinctive title. This was called the “Weekly Newos” and was first published in 1622. There were, however, during the Civil War and the Commonwealth, a great number of newspapers, but

their publication was only by leave of the Star Chamber. When the Act for licensing printing presses expired, and the Star Chamber had been abolished, it was thought by printers that they had a legal right to publish what they chose. But the judges decided that no man not authorised by the Crown, had any right to publish political news, though he could print, at Ilia own risk, a history, a sermon, or a poem, without license. But it was political intelligence which the public most wanted, and as it was essential to the interests of an autocratic ministry of “placemen” that the public should be kept in ignorance of political matters there ensued, for a century, an historic struggle between Parliament and the people over the

freedom of the Frees. Up to the Long Parliament the duty of censoring publications was performed by the Archbishop of Canterbury, or his subordinates, and offenders were prosecuted in the Star Chamber. The Press became temporarily free on the abolition of the Star Chamber, but the Long Parliament became frightened by the mass of pamphlets which were soon broadcasted over the country, and later an Act was passed which vested in the Government the entire control of printing. It was the non-renewal of this Act in 1695 which paved the way for the freedom of the Press. Towards the end of the reign of Charles 11. that monarch allowed no other paper to be published but the “London Gazette,” a bi-weekly

production which contained nothing but what the Court deemed suitable to its purposes. It was not till some time after the Revolution that the Press became in any modern sense, a free institution, and the first daily newspaper in England was not published till the accession of Queen Anne in 1702. This was called the “Daily Courant.” But there came an obstacle to the newspaper in 1712 when an Act was passed by which a tax was imposed on all newsnewspapers. This was a device for killing the newspaper, and it was eminently successful, for not one penny paper survived.

With the subsequent removal of all restrictions, other than the ordinary law of libel, came the development of shorthand reporting. No stranger dared to be seen taking a note. The old “Morning Chronicle,” which for a long time was the leading English newspaper, posessed an astonishing mental note taken in the person of one “Memory” Woodfall, who is said to have written many reports extending over several columns, without making a mistake, and without having taken a single note. In 1738 Parliament took steps to stops reporting, and in 1745 the printers of the “London Magazine”

were placed in custody for reporting the trial of Lord Lovat before his peers, while in 1764 the Louse ox Lords imposed a fine of £IOO on the '■'London Evening Post,” for having mentioned the name of one of the speakers in the HouseAfter this, public sympathy for reporting became too strong for parliamentary privilege, with the result that reporting gradually became lawful, but it was not until the middle of the 18th century that the system of having regular relays of reporters was initiated.

The newspaper is commonly referred to as “The Fourth Estate,” and many people are led to wonder how it came to be given this name. Edmund Burke, in alluding to the three estates of the realm—lords, clergy and commons—constituting the British Parliament, termed the public press the “fourth estate,” by reason of the enormous influence which journalism exerts over both imperial and domestic affairs.

A good deal of fuss was made over the first discovery of a moa bone in the Timaru clay. (J. T. Morris wrote some verses about it.) Numerous others were unearthed later. The skeleton of a small moa was met with in tunnelling for blasts in the North Mole quarry, Wai-iti Creek, and casts of bones in the surface soil under the lava rock near Whales Creek were brought to view in 1880, when the waves had cleared away the beach. Greater stir was caused when the spray falling on the clay at Dashing Rocks, uncovered moa-hunters’ oven-stones, mixed with charcoal and fragments of charred moa bones. The spot was industriously dug over by visitors in the hope of finding bits of greenstone.