ABSTRACT
Anyone who clings to the notion that the sensationalism practiced by Rupert Murdoch or even the most shameless present-day journalist is unprecedented could be set straight by spending a few minutes with any of a number of sixteenth- or seventeenth-century newsbooks. Some would not even glorify it with the appellation "journalism". Over the centuries many serious journalists and a few blue-nosed censors have struggled to excise bloody and obscene stories like this from the news. Early forms of printed news certainly did not deprive readers of an opportunity to gape at life's outsized outrages, and Murdoch or Hearst might have envied the stories available to sixteenth-and seventeenth-century journalists. All journalists are comrades in the battle against dullness; they are straining not to bore the sultan. But where the most respectable and skilled journalist might season the news they gather with some delicately applied celebration or wit, sensationalists pour on the catsup.
