Francis Foster

Anyway, a tribune, an elected official, or a senator, another elected official, largely inherited as well, they could object.

That was it.

And there was no correction process, you couldn't sue, there was no libel, there was no slander.

But it's the beginning of news.

Now, why do the Romans do it?

No other ancient people had really done it this way before.

And it's because they were trying to control rumors and speculation.

And as bad as we think the internet is, ancient Rome was far worse.

People making up all sorts of wild stories.

People thinking the conspiracy theories of the internet

Ancient Rome had this times 10.

And they realized if we didn't do something, if we didn't start to say what the actual casualty figures were in the battle that we lost, or what the actual territory we just took was, wild stories would abound.

And that would mean that there would be trials, sometimes executions, coups, upheavals, all sorts of things.

So if we could give the public, and this is why it's proto-news,

common share of facts things that we all know are true and can roughly agree on that that would cause peace not perfect peace not perfect harmony but at least we're not arguing about basic facts

And that is the beginning of understanding the importance of news.

If we all have the same vocabulary of facts, then we're debating about how important this is compared to that.

Why is our politics so polarized today?

Because we no longer have this shared diet of facts.

But when it works, and we're all agreed as to what is going on, what the facts are, and the debate is about the emphasis, we're in a much less polarized world.