WHEN I joined the Brighton and Hove Herald, I was told in hushed tones by senior reporters how it had once secured one of the greatest scoops in history.

Almost 200 years ago, it was the first British newspaper to report on Napoleon’s defeat at the Battle of Waterloo.

The scoop was partly fortuitous since it came from a messenger sent hot foot from the scene by the Duke of Wellington to tell the Prince Regent the good news.

Prinny happened to be in Brighton at the time and somehow the Herald managed to garner enough information to make a great story.

But it had still taken days for news of such a major event to reach the rulers of the nation and even longer for the people to be informed.

Newspapers were still fairly young – the Herald had been going only nine years by the time of Waterloo – and they helped disseminate information more speedily.

But even well into the 19th century, much communication was pretty primitive.

Big crowds would turn out to hear charismatic public speakers such as Liberal Prime Minister William Gladstone.

There was no way in the days before microphones that Gladstone could project his voice and be heard by crowds of 30,000 which he regularly attracted.

So people were employed to pass on the main points of his message by turning round and bellowing it to the back of the throng several times, and I have often wondered how garbled it was after these shouts.

The advent of phones improved communications within a few years. Then came radio and John Logie Baird’s experiments in Hastings between the wars eventually resulted in television.

Even then, it took time for information to go global. I remember the BBC preening itself when Richard Dimbleby, father of David and Jonathan, made the first live transmission over the Channel.

The power of speedy mass information was not lost on politicians. Winston Churchill used radio most effectively in his famous patriotic wartime broadcasts when all might have otherwise appeared lost.

Ronald Reagan, trained as an actor, proved his skills as a communicator in establishing himself as a folksy leader – a president in touch with ordinary people, although this image failed to cross the Atlantic.

But the potential for evil was also soon recognised. Someone, and it might have been Mark Twain, remarked that a lie can be half way round the world before the truth has got its boots on.

The most profound change in communications has come with the internet.

It is unmatched as a speedy source of information.

A major story such as the outbreak of Ebola in Western Africa can be put round the world with enormous rapidity, leading many people to react positively.

The revival of Band Aid this week to help raise cash for tackling this terrible disease is a heartening example of the power for good the worldwide web can be.

At the same time it is possible for fanatics such as the man nicknamed Jihadi John and his colleagues to gain instant worldwide publicity for their shocking beheading of westerners they have captured.

The video he issued this week highlights another concern. Despite the hideous scenes it contains, the material is freely available for anyone to see on the web, perhaps including young children.

There is something rather magnificent about the fact that no one controls the internet. But it is also quite alarming.

Radio, TV and newspapers generally try to give people some idea of how important a story is and how likely it is to be true. With the internet, anything goes and people have to make their own judgments, often on the flimsiest of information.

It is the ideal place for trolls to gather and place their often vile messages. They are the people who used to write letters to papers in green ink which were only seen by editors before being dropped in the wastepaper basket.

The internet makes it easier than ever for an idea, slogan or currency to gain popular support.

It can be fairly amusing and harmless when, for instance, thousands of people in Brighton and Hove inform the census that their religion is Jedi Knight.

But what worries me is that plausible politicians seeking power for the worst of motives could con people into offering their support simply because they have nothing to judge them against.

That’s why it’s vital for newspapers and other controlled forms of communication to continue, online and in print, to give guidance and put things in perspective.

Mind you, even the best of newspapers are not always infallible.

Years after I’d informed people about the Herald’s great 1815 scoop, someone told me with great authority it was not true.

He said the Herald exclusive story was about Napoleon’s escape from Elba a few months earlier which was nothing like as important. Somewhere over the years, the truth met its Waterloo.