Benjamin Harris

America’s First Editor/Publisher

of

PUBLICK OCCURRENCES Both FOREIGN and DOMESTICK

Boston, 1690

Benjamin Harris (1673-1716) was a vocal anti-Catholic London pamphleteer and editor of London’s Domestick Intelligence or News both from City and Country which, it said, was “Published to prevent false Reports.” He was one of the “inventors” of the fictitious 1678 “Popish Plot,” which alleged that Jesuits were planning to kill King Charles II and install to the throne his Catholic brother. Harris was fined and imprisoned several times and in 1686 he left with his family for Boston, where he opened the London Coffee House (at today’s intersection of Washing- ton and Court streets), in which he printed and sold books. He published America’s first textbook, the hugely popular New England Primer. Along with books, he was licensed to sell “Coffee, Tea and Chucalito.”

On Sept. 25, 1690, he published Publick Occurrences, a paper that measured 7.5”x11.5” and had text on three of its four pages--the fourth was left blank so the readers could write their personal “news” or views before they passed the paper to neighbors. Publick Occurrences was shut down four days after its first and only issue by the “governour and council” because, the order said, the newspaper was printed without permission and because it contained “doubtful and uncertain Reports.” Most likely, the reference here was to a report about the king of France who, the paper said, “used to lie with the Son’s Wife.”

Harris’ first news item was about the ‘”the Christianized Indians in some parts of Plimouth,” who “have newly appointed a day of Thanksgiving to God....” The paper also included such news items as several confrontations among Indians and European settlers in New England, a Water- town farmer who committed suicide because he was depressed over his wife’s death, items about “Epidemical Fevers” and “Small-pox,” a “Disaster by Fire” that destroyed many houses around the “South-Meeting-House” and “near the Mill-Creek,” and a report about a failed “Western Expedition against Canada.” News items were not separated by headlines, but by blank spaces and indentations.

But Harris’ publishing genius became evident through his impressive foresight about his journalistic undertaking. In his first “story,” which appeared in italics before the news, he laid out his principles and goals.

Harris promised “the Country shall be furnished once a month (or if any Glut of Occurrences happen, oftener) with an Account of such considerable things as have arrived unto our Notice.” He also promised to attempt to do something “towards the Curing, or at least the Charming of that Spirit of Lying, which prevails amongst us.”

Harris pledged that his paper would cover “such consider- able things as have arrived unto our Notice” so that people “may better understand the Circumstances of Publique Affairs, both abroad and at home” and never would print anything except “what we have reason to believe is true.” He said, “the Publisher will take what pains he can to obtain a Faithful Relation of all such things; and will particularly make himself beholden to such Persons in Boston whom he knows to have been for their own use the diligent Observers of such matters.”

Finally, Harris said, if a mistake is made “it shall be corrected in the next” issue, and promised that those who spread “False Reports, maliciously made” would be exposed as having committed a “villainous” crime.

These are important commitments, promises and ethical parameters that govern journalism even today. For Harris to have made them in 1690 is as inspiring as it is hard to believe. But he did, and he set the bar high for those who followed.

It is unfortunate that he did not have a chance to practice what he promised. Issues of his paper were destroyed, except for one copy that was sent to England and today can be found in the British Library. Harris returned to London in 1695, where he published the London Post, 1699-1706. He died in 1716.