According to Wikipedia, 1632 is when the Star Chamber:
…banned all “news books” because of complaints from Spanish and Austrian diplomats that coverage of the Thirty Years’ War in England was unfair. As a result, newsbooks pertaining to this matter were often printed in Amsterdam and then smuggled into the country, until the ban was lifted six years later.
So foreign trouble-makers who objected to free speech and who insisted on politically correct versions of current events managed to censor the news. Plus ca change.
It’s fascinating to me that Canada’s human rights commissions defend themselves as progressive and modern and evolved. In fact, they’re medieval throw-backs to an age when political and religious terror, censorship, and abuse of process still coloured political life. Those were the dark days; how terrfying that the are being revived now, by those claiming to be angels of light.
