ABSTRACT
In 1485, the fake news of that era – a distorted, sensationalist newsbook – gave the world Count Dracula (not to be confused with a prince of Wallachia on which he was based). Older, oral modes of news dissemination still existed – the troubadour tradition transmitted news as lyric verse, but the newsbooks and handbills soon began to replace them. The news was marketed as ‘trewe’, ‘warrented’, ‘véritable’ but was more often than not concerned with fantastic tales of monsters on land and at sea, freak births, miracles. From the beginning of printed news there was strange newes, and this ‘fake news’ was what sold. Even reports grounded in fact, such as those concerned with floods and other natural disasters, were presented in sensationalist terms. The authorities licensed these as harmless distractions, while maintaining the strictest censorship around anything political, controversial and/or embarrassing. But sober reporting was also possible and unexciting information was copied in manuscript for private circulation by princes and merchants. Curiously, there is one surviving 12th century account of an eye-witnessed news event. Such an approach, though, would not come to dominate printed news until some two centuries after the introduction of printing.
