found in the new force which he had discovered, that 
     force which we today would call “the power of the press”. 
     Aretino himself regarded it as the power of his pen. He 
     himself did not realize the right Promethean fire with 
     which he was playing. All he knew was that he had a 
     tremendous instrument in his hands, and he employed it 
     quite as unscrupulously as it, consistently, has been 
     employed since his time. He was capable—see his 
     Letters —of being quite as hypocritical as the press of 
     today.

     Putnam goes on (p. 41) to mention that Aretino was 
“perhaps the greatest blackmailer in all history, the first truly 
modern exponent of the ‘poison pen’.” That is to say, Aretino 
really regarded the printing press as a public confessional with 
himself as Father Confessor, pen or microphone in hand.