In the days before widespread literacy, some governments announced public proclamations by a town crier.

As time passed, literacy became more important for commerce and making a living. Public school systems increased.

However, news, other than local, was not yet an important part of ordinary life. In the novel by Paulette Jiles, News of the World, Civil War veteran Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd makes a living by traveling to small Texas towns and charging money to read newspapers to audiences.

It took radio and the advent of world wide wars to make news a staple of the average American household. Television brought the horror of the Vietnam conflict into the living room.

From earliest colonial times, courts decreed that truth was the deciding factor in what could be printed as news. Even if a news story was derogatory to public officials, it must be allowed if it was true. If it was not true, the source of the falsehood could be sued for libel.

Today, we have fewer “gatekeepers,” that is, editors and investigators, to test stories for the truth before they are “printed.” Today, because of the internet, truth and lies can unsettle whole populations before stories can be unraveled.

Whether this glut of words—news, opinion, knowledge, entertainment, lies, gems of wisdom, personal data, and a hundred other kinds of reportage—is good or bad is an open question. The outcome depends on how responsible we literate beings are in what we choose to read.