20 - Nouvelles du monde
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Martial Martin
« Foreign News » in occasional publications and libels during the French Wars of Religion
Le Temps des médias n°20, Printemps - été 2013, p. 9-21.
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Very early in History of printed information, Foreign News emerged alongside National life (structured around princes and nobles and some special events as births, weddings, entrances) and miscellaneous (bloody murders, queer sexualities, monsters, celestial phenomena, disasters). Italy Wars coverage is probably the starting point of the « international press » in France. It deals, therefore, from the beginning, with military glorification of the Nation, of the Nobles and the King. However, it is with civil and religious conflicts in the second part of the century that international news really increased. In a religious, diplomatic and military space which was widely European, people were on the lookout for News from the Netherlands, Spain, Germany, England, Switzerland and Italy, as evidenced by the registers held by the best witness of that time, Pierre de L’Estoile, always looking for rumors and leaflets from abroad. For commercial reasons, these sheets were often scratched as many placards at the time. But the « manipulation » of foreign news did not end there : playing on their adjacency considering both forms and production or distribution networks, political libels did not hesitate to present themselves as letters from England, Spain or Italy (sometimes even from overseas) : one of their means, National sentiment developed on foreign stereotypes.