Into the 20th century

540

The story so far...

• Public sphere formed and journalism puts down roots

• Mediation and media: response to change:– Hazlitt: radical– Dickens: industrial revolution– Russell: change of war– Newnes: new readers

The story so far...

• London: capital then imperial city supported by:– Docks: trade– Railways: national readership– Telegraph: command and control of empire

The claim

• “Genuinely objective journalism….ten, twenty, fifty years after the fact still holds up a true and intelligent mirror to events.” T D Allman

• “Never believe anything until it is officially denied.” Claud Cockburn

“Strategic ritual” & “Myth”

• Strategic ritual of objectivity: “facts are assertions about the world open to independent validation” Schudson

• Myth -- “a clarity…not of explanation... but of fact” Barthes -- of impartiality: devoid of particular interests, political or commercial

WWI: 1914-1918

• German imperial expansion vs French, Russian and British imperial concerns

• Germany, Austria-Hungary, Rumania & Turkey v France, Russia, Italy, Serbia, British Empire, Belgium, Portugal, Serbia

• Seas controlled by Royal Navy: land slaughter on East, South and Western Fronts

Chateau Generalship

• Briefing of newspaper journalists by HQs• Direct and indirect censorship• Relay by telegraph to home• Daily printing of news briefs• Daily casualty lists

“We know we’re telling lies,” Lord Rothermere, Daily Mail

• Daily Mail 2.3 million• “Not a word of conscious falsehood…but

they do not tell all the truth...” Gibbs• Shell crisis: Mail blames Kitchener; 1 mn

down: called “Allies of the Hun”• Daily Mail in victory: “After this no one will

treat the Huns as civilised or repentant”

Photography -- early embedding

• Growing use the of official photographer: Germany 50; France 35; UK 16

• Posed and training scenes presented as real attacks

• Strong propaganda use

Resistance

• Sassoon’s letter: “this war, upon which I entered as a war of defence and liberation, has now become a war of aggression and conquest” -- there is “something wrong” with “this extremely gallant officer” -- sent to a psychiatric hospital

Home and Away

Women’s Own and The WeekThe 1930s

Women’s Own

• Women get the vote• The start of the 1930s revival in the South East

based on house building

1932

• Dickens’ Household Words about the outside world

• Women’s Own about domesticity: “there is no such thing as society, only people and families”

• First sale with cover mount with 3 skeins of wool: the domestic crafts

• The attempt to regain “normalcy” after WWI and flapper 20s

• Women, know your place: in the home looking after children

Deep water port for iron ore and coal; based on River Rouge plant, Detroit; self-contained; 1931; 11 m vehicles; 37 m engines; 4,000 workers at height

Ford’sHoover

Phillips

The Week

• “Unquestionably the nastiest-looking bit of work that ever dropped onto a breakfast table.” Dark brown ink, six sides of foolscap

• Tiny circulation, wide influence• Claud Cockburn (1904-1981)• Resigned from The Times over appeasement

• Started 1933 weeks after Hitler in power in

Germany

• “Generalisations can be boring, details hardly ever.”

• Digging the details of City, Government and politics

• Newspapers need wide circulations to survive: they must appeal broadly; The Week would have a narrow appeal

• Small group of journalists, mostly foreigners in London, meet weekly and pool stories

• Went out Wednesday, before the Friday weeklies.• 1,200 trial circulation: got 7 paying subscribers• “I know it’s good for me, but, by God, it gets on

one’s nerves.”• The existence of a significant rumour is as

important as a proven fact.• “The equation of rumour with fact made The

Week an intoxicating newspaper: written for the knowing by those in the know...in the august and persuasive language of The Times.”

World Economic Forum

• The Week: It will be a failure: things are going badly at it

• Main stream media: it’s going well, it will sort things out

• MacDonald’s press conference were be brandishes The Week

• Circulation trebles and increases in quality

War scares

• Hitler wants war• Russia wants peace as a defence for its

revolution after the New Economic Policy• Metro-Vick affair• The Clivedon set• The Spanish Civil war

Assignment 1: Due end of week 4: Friday June 14th

• Journalism students:– Assignment 1: You are a newspaper columnist employed by an

American newspaper based in London. You are to write a 2,000 word feature on the current condition of British journalism, explaining and examining the relationships between the public, politicians and journalists.

• PR students:

– Assignment 1: You have been hired by one of the three leading political parties in the UK. You are to craft a media campaign for one of them because a snap general election has been called for November. Identify the issues you will focus on and how you will tackle the likely issues raised by the two other parties.

The triangle

• Observation by you and others• Reason: a logical argument• Debate: pros and cons