On this day in 1690, Benjamin Harris published Publick Occurrences Both Forreign and Domestick in Boston, Massachusetts. However, as Steve King writes, the publication was hardly imposing, “only three of the four book-sized pages had copy,” yet those three pages far too much free speech for the British colonial government and they did not tolerate a second issue:
The opening editorial outlined the newspaper’s aims: to help people “better understand the Circumstances of Public Affairs”; to do “something towards the Curing, or at least the Charming, of that Spirit of Lying, which prevails amongst us”; and to remind a forgetful public of “Memorable Occurrents of Divine Providence.”
The first issue reported on a local suicide, a bountiful harvest, recent illnesses, and a range of military troubles with the Indians and the French colony in Canada. No doubt it was the military news which alarmed the British colonial authorities in Boston. Finding “reflections of a very high nature,” and “sundry doubtful and uncertain reports,” they immediately banned Publick Occurrences and decreed that all future publishing enterprises would require a government license.