Santa Claus Isn't Real and Neither is a Free Press

Printing Presses were thought to be Tools of Freedom

Yay! Moveable Type Printing Presses Invented

In 1440 Johannes Gutenberg invented the movable printing press in Mainz, Germany.¹ Looking back we imagine that was the start of freedom of the press. Everyone will be able to find out everything they need to know!

But of course, most people couldn’t read.²

The first book to be printed in English—The Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye— was produced in 1473 by William Caxton, in Bruges, where he learned the printer’s art. Caxton moved back to England in 1476 and published the first book in English in England: Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales ³

The Worshipful Company of Stationers

In England The Worshipful Company of Stationers had been founded in 1403 initially to oversee text writers and book binders but as publishing grew it held a monopoly over the publishing industry and was officially responsible for setting and enforcing regulations. The company’s role was to regulate and discipline the industry, define proper conduct and maintain its own corporate privileges.⁴

By making possible for the first time the wide and rapid dissemination of dissenting opinion on matters both political and religious, the invention of the printing press in the fifteenth century confronted European governments with a new and perplexing problem. The need to address this problem led to the extensive use of censorship.⁵

Prior to the summer of 1641 the Stationers’ Company, backed by the courts of Star Chamber and High Commission, was largely successful in curtailing the publication of domestic political news that had been prohibited by royal decree. ⁶

Areopagitica

Written in 1644 John Milton’s Areopagitica was a passionate argument against government restriction on free speech.⁷ Vincent Blasi views this as the Foundational Essay of the First Amendment Tradition.⁸

The Demons (1871–72) by Fyodor Dostoevsky

But all over Europe religion and government continued to suppress free speech and the free press. In The Demons (1871–72) by Fyodor Dostoevsky the conspirators buried a printing press they intended to use for pamphlets to foment revolution. This was because under the Russian Empire’s Ministry of Education Bureau of Censorship, “no book or essay shall be printed in the Russian Empire except following review by the Censor.”⁹

The Printing Press as an Agent of Change

Censorship is a confrontation and a dialogue between authors and censors over the meaning that a text might take on, as early as the first stage of its elaboration in manuscript but also when it is printed…It implies an attempt to gain control, as much as is possible, of the anticipated reception of a text.¹⁰

In her classic work, The Printing Press as an Agent of Change, Elizabeth Eisenstein,¹¹ explored the impact of the printing press of the development of ideas.

Yay! Social Media Everybody Can Share Ideas

In December 2022 Elon Musk who had bought the microblogging platform, Twitter, released files of internal correspondence among Twitter employees and government agencies relating to censoring accounts and content. ¹²

The “Twitter Files” to date have been released in ten installments by Matt Taibbi,¹³ Bari Weiss, Lee Fang, Michael Shellenberger, and David Zweig.

They aren’t done yet, but they show us that the promise of a free press, never realized with the printing press, is still not real…like Santa Claus.

The Oldest Extant Printing Presses

The great tool of change, the printing press, can be viewed at The Museum Plantin-Moretus, a UNESCO World Heritage site. The printing company was founded in the 16th century by printer Christophe Plantin.

The Plantin-Moretus Museum houses the two oldest surviving printing presses in the world and complete sets of dies and matrices.¹⁴

1. Kapr Albert Johann Gutenberg and Martin Douglas. 1996. Johann Gutenberg : The Man and His Invention. Aldershot (England) Brookfield (Vermont): Scolar Press ; Ashgate.

2. Vincent, David. The Rise of Mass Literacy : Reading and Writing in Modern Europe. Cambridge, UK : Polity, 2000.

3. Blake, Norman Francis (1976). Caxton: England's First Publisher. London: Barnes and Noble.

4. History and Heritage (stationers.org)

5. “Government Control of the Printing Press: Star Chamber Censorship Ordinances (1566, 1586) and Philip Stubbs’ Comments on Censorship (1593).” Voices of Shakespeare’s England: Contemporary Accounts of Elizabethan Daily Life, 2010.

6. Gustafson, Stephanie Hoesche. “‘A Press Full of Pamphlets’: The Printing of News in London, 1640–1642.” ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 2000.

7. Areopagitica; A speech of Mr. John Milton for the Liberty of Unlicenc'd Printing, to the Parlament of England (1644).

8. Blasi, Vincent. 2018. “A Reader’s Guide to John Milton’s Areopagitica, the Foundational Essay of the First Amendment Tradition.” Supreme Court Review 2017 (1): 273–312. (Blasi is Corliss Lamont Professor of Civil Liberties at Columbia Law School).

9. "Statutes of Censorship". Imperial Russian Government. July 9, 1804.

10. Review of Censors at Work: How States Shaped Literature by Robert Darnton. New York: W.W. Norton 2014. by Vincent Milliot in The Journal of Modern History, September 2016, Vol. 88: 679-681.

11. Eisenstein, Elizabeth L. The Printing Press as an Agent of Change : Communications and Cultural Transformations in Early Modern Europe, Volumes I and II. 14th printing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980.

12. Description: Internal Twitter documents released in December 2022 by Elon Musk. Dates of files: 2019–2022.Period of release December 2, 2022 – ongoing Publishers Matt Taibbi, Bari Weiss, Lee Fang, Michael Shellenberger, David Zweig.

• Part 1, December 2, 2022

• Part 1.5, December 6, 2022

• Part 2, December 8, 2022

• Part 3, December 9, 2022

• Part 4, December 10, 2022

• Part 5, December 12, 2022

• Part 6, December 16, 2022

• Part 6.5, December 18, 2022

• Part 7, December 19, 2022

• Part 8, December 20, 2022

• Part 9, December 24, 2022

• Part 10, December 26, 2022

13. Matt Taibbi, Note to Readers on the "Twitter Files" Explaining a few things I couldn't before, and getting back on schedule here at TK;

14. Voet Léon. (1969;1972). The golden compasses. a history and evaluation of the printing and publishing activities of the officina plantiniana at antwerp. Van Gendt; Abner Schram.