Oh the Pain! (in the ...)

It seems to me that the first journalists were also the first writers. All the earliest writing samples we know of (hierogylphics, cuneiform, etc.) came about when some king wanted to leave a record of his exploits on a wall or a ziggurat or something. Or maybe he wanted to know how many men were in his army, how many bales of wheat he had in storage, etc. Somebody had to collect the information and then commit it to the writing medium of choice (a rock, a clay tablet, whatever).
Then, at some point, the scribe had to actually go out to the battlefield to watch what happened, and jot something down to give to a courier -- rather than just hope a runner like the first marathoner makes it far enough to yell "Rejoice, we conquer!" before dropping dead. The on-scene scribe has got to make sure what's on the note is right, it's readable, and it's usable. It doesn't have to be fair to the other side, it just has to be basically correct.
The first public journalist was said to be the Greek historian Thucydides, who was in Athens during the Peloponnesian War when the plague hit. I think he caught it, but survived, unlike Pericles and lots of other people. He wrote about that first-hand (if I recall correctly) and left it to posterity. He did lots of historical writing as well, but the part he saw he bore witness to.
I believe the first English journalist was thought to be Samuel Pepys. He was a government bureaucrat, who was in London during the Great Fire and the ensuing plague there. He wrote about what he witnessed first hand, but apparently was afraid his candid observations would get him in trouble, so he posted to his journal in a personal code. I don't think it was broken until sometime in the 1800s. Again, a witness-bearer to violence and disease, but this one apparently recognized how easy it is to make somebody angry when you're telling the truth.
Then comes my favorite -- John "That Devil" Wilkes. He was jailed for doing something that was highly illegal in his day: going to Parliament and reporting on the debates that went on. I think he was sent to the Tower for it. He did it for his own newspaper that I believe was called The North Briton. Wilkes eventually got himself elected to parliament, took the side of the colonists in the American Revolution, and got his name put all over the place here. I grew up in one of those places.
Then came Benjamin Franklin, then the Constitution and its First Amendment, and so it went from there.
If I may put on my pontiff's tiara (or at least my white skullcap) for a moment: it may be that money and power have become so entwined with the news media that reporters have gotten lost on some basic points along the way. Those early pioneers did stuff that was scary for their day and time, and some suffered as a result. But instead of bearing witness to plagues in cities, could it be that reporters have become a plague on society? I hope not.


LJ orig.: 11/13/06