Cirrus@Austlit

'The media flurry about ‘fake news’ and the era of ‘post-truth’ in the wake of Donald Trump’s presidential election was surely somewhat disingenuous. When was the news ever free from faking or bias or manipulation of the truth? Until the Civil Wars of the mid-seventeenth century it had been prohibited to publish domestic news in Britain. With the breakdown of authority in the confrontation of king and parliament, both sides issued newspapers. Mercurius Aulicus gave the Royalist news, Mercurius Britannicus gave the Parliamentary version. The origins of the English- language newspaper were in partisan politics, not in any concern for the truth. And it has surely stayed that way.'  (Introduction)