Narrating Media History

Michael Bailey

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781134112104
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Communication Studies
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Based on the work of media historian, James Curran, Narrating Media History explores British media history as a series of competing narratives.

This unique and timely collection brings together leading international media history scholars, not only to identify and contrast the various interrelationships between media histories, but also to encourage dialogue between different historical, political, and theoretical perspectives including:

liberalism, feminism, populism, nationalism, libertarianism, radicalism and technological determinism.

Essays by distinguished academics cover television, radio, newspaper press and advertising (among others) and illustrate the particularities, affinities, strengths and weaknesses within media history. Each section includes a brief introduction by the editor, with discussion topics and suggestions for further reading, making this an invaluable guide for students of media history.

Chapter 1

Narratives of media history revisited

James Curran

It was a happy chance that took me to see Copenhagen, a play that re-enacts, from different perspectives, fateful interchanges between a Danish and a German physicist during the 1930s and 1940s. It gave me the idea of presenting British media history as a series of competing narratives, in the opening chapter of my book, Media and Power (Curran 2002). The book was translated into five languages and led directly to this volume, which explores media history in terms of my proposed ‘rival’ narratives.

In adopting an unconventional formula for a literature review, I was responding to what seemed to me to be three underlying problems. British media history is highly fragmented, being subdivided by period, medium and interpretive tradition. It is often narrowly centred on media institutions and content, leaving the wider setting of society as a shadowy background. And media history has not become as central in media studies as one might expect, given that it pioneered the study of the media. So I was looking for a way of integrating medium history into a general account of media development, connecting these to the ‘mainframe’ of general history and conveying how media history illuminates the role of the media in society – in the present, as well as in the past.

In returning to the subject of my essay some six years after it was first written, I shall attempt to do two things. I will briefly restate the essay’s central themes, although in a new way by concentrating primarily on recent research. I will also suggest, with great diffidence, possible new directions in which media history might develop in the future, including the reclaiming of ‘lost narratives’.

Dominant tradition

Any review of British media history must begin with its leading and longest established interpretation – the liberal narrative. This was first scripted, in its initial form, in the nineteenth century, and comes out of the hallowed tradition of ‘constitutional’ history which examines the development of Britain’s political system from Anglo-Saxon times to the present.

Key landmarks in Britain’s constitutional evolution are said to be the defeat of absolutist monarchy, the establishment of the rule of law, the strengthening of parliament and the introduction of mass democracy in five, cautious instalments. It is also claimed that the media acquired a ‘constitutional’ role by becoming the voice of the people and a popular a check on government.

This constitutional elevation is usually recounted in terms of two intertwined narrative threads. The first of these records that the press became free of government control by the mid-nineteenth century, and its emancipation was followed by the liberation of film and broadcasting in the mid-twentieth century. The second thread is concerned with how independent media empowered the people. Recent historical work has focused on the latter theme, so this is what we shall concentrate upon.

There is broad agreement among liberal media historians that the rise of a more independent press changed the tenor and dynamics of English politics. Newspapers increased their political content during the eighteenth century and successfully defied the ban on the reporting of parliament during the 1760s. This enabled newspapers to shine a low wattage light on the previously private world of aristocratic politics. People outside the political system could observe, through the press, factional battles among their rulers. How spectators reacted to these battles began to matter, as increasing references in the later eighteenth century to the wider public testify. In a more general sense, the rise of the press was part of a profound shift, in which it came to be accepted that the general public had the right to debate and evaluate the actions of their rulers. Some publications also directly attacked corruption and oligarchy, functioning as pioneer watchdogs monitoring the abuse of official power. In short, the growth of public disclosure through the press rendered the governmental system more open and accountable.¹

The expansion of the press after the end of licensing in 1695 also contributed, it is argued, to the building of a representative institution. During the eighteenth century, newspapers mushroomed in different parts of the country and expanded their readership. An increased number of newspapers published views as well as news reports, seeking to speak for their readers. By the 1850s, following a period of rapid expansion and enhanced independence, the press allegedly came of age as an empowering agency. Its thunder echoed down the corridors of power.

However, the central unanswered question at the heart of this eloquent liberal narrative is precisely who was being represented by this ‘empowering’ press. A much favoured answer, over a quarter of a century ago, was the dynamic forces of the ‘new society’, that is to say primarily the middle and working classes in the expanding urban centres of the ‘first industrial nation’.² This interpretation stressed the progressive nature of the evolving press, the way in which it broke free from the political agenda of the landed elite and supported campaigns to reform the institutions of British society. Indeed, in some versions of this argument, the growing power of the press helped to usher in a new political order that reflected the changed balance of social forces in British society.

This beguiling interpretation has been undermined from two different directions. Revisionist histories of nineteenth-century Britain increasingly emphasize continuity rather than radical change. They point to the embedded nature of the ancien regime before the extension of the franchise; the powerful pull of Anglicanism, localism and tradition; the incremental, uneven nature of the industrial revolution; and, above all, the landed elite’s continued dominance of political life until late into the nineteenth century.³ Meanwhile, historical research has drawn attention to the continuing importance of the conservative press (which greatly strengthened in the last quarter of the eighteenth century), the diversity of the nineteenth-century newspapers and the tenuous evidence that the press strongly influenced political elites and public policy, save in special circumstances (Black 2001). The thesis that an independent press, representative of a transformed society, helped to forge a new political order now looks distinctly unconvincing.

So whom did the press represent? The undermining of the claim that the later Hanoverian press championed a progressive social alliance has encouraged a return to a traditionalist Whig view of the press as the voice of an indeterminate ‘public’. Typical of this shift is Hannah Barker’s (2000) now standard textbook which argues that newspapers gained a larger, more socially diverse readership and came to be shaped primarily by their customers. ‘The importance of sales to newspaper profits’, she writes, ‘forced papers to echo the views of their readers in order to thrive’ (ibid.: 4). By 1855, she concludes, ‘the newspaper press in England was largely free of government interference and was able – with some justification – to proclaim itself as the fourth estate of the British constitution’ as it informed and represented public opinion (ibid.: 222).

However, some liberal historians remain rightly uneasy about viewing the press as the voice of an undefined public. Jeremy Black, for example, argues that ‘the press was at best a limited guide to the opinions of the public’ and should be viewed as connecting to ‘public opinions rather than public opinion’ (Black 2001: 107). This more nuanced view enables him to conclude that ‘public culture’ (in which the press was central) became less representative of political difference after the 1850s (ibid.: 192). Other liberal historians point to the growing interpenetration of journalism and politics in the second half of the nineteenth century and early twentieth century when much of the national press became an extension of the party system (Seymour-Ure 1977; Boyce 1978). The liberal historian Stephen Koss (1981/1984) even argues that the British press did not become representative of the public until the late 1940s and 1950s when national newspapers allegedly shed their close party attachments.

But if the Whig conception of the press as a fourth estate looks vulnerable, there is another interpretation waiting in the wings. In 1982, Brian Harrison wrote an erudite essay assessing the role of the pressure group periodical in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. He showed that these modest, and widely overlooked, publications helped to sustain public interest groups ‘through three major functions: inspirational, informative and integrating’ (Harrison 1982: 282). They inspired some converts to the cause; they armed activists with factual ammunition and sustained commitment; and they sometimes helped to unify reforming movements. By contributing to the functioning and effectiveness of pressure groups, the minority political press contributed to the development of a pluralist democracy.

This is an important line of argument that can now be extended, with the help of more recent research, to the earlier period. The eighteenth-century press provided the oxygen of publicity for political campaigning centred on petitions, addresses, instructions (to MPs), public meetings and concerted demonstrations (Brewer 1976; Black 2002; Rogers 2006). These fostered a ‘modern’ style of politics based on public discussion and participation, rather than on personal relationships, clientelist networks and social deference. Sections of the press aided this new politics by conferring prominence on leading campaigners, by communicating their arguments and demands and by mobilizing public support. They contributed in other words to the building of an infrastructure of representation based on collective organizations.

In the nineteenth century, radical newspapers contributed to the growth of trade unions; reformist publications sustained a growing multiplicity of interest groups; and a new, party-aligned press helped to transform aristocratic factions in parliament into mass political parties. This last development – often attracting disapproval from liberal press historians – represented a crucial contribution to the building of a key institution of democracy. Political parties became key co-ordinating organizations within the British political system: they aggregated social interests, formulated political programmes that distributed costs and redistributed resources across society, and defined political choices for the electorate.⁴

A view of the press as an agency contributing to the building of civil society is subtly different from, and more persuasive than, a traditional conception of the press as the ventriloquist of the public. Yet, arguments and evidence supporting this alternative interpretation are to be found in numerous radical as well as liberal accounts (for example, Hollis 1970 and Black 2002). These portray the press as contributing to the development of civil society organizations through which different publics were represented. Implicitly, they also depict civil society rather than the press as the main locus of representation.

Mark Hampton (2004) has adopted a questioning view of traditional liberal press history in another way. In a notable book, he documents the mid-Victorian elite vision of an educative press that would recruit large numbers of people to ‘politics by discussion’. This gave way, he shows, to growing disenchantment when newspapers became more commercial and sensational, and large numbers of people turned away from ‘liberal’ enlightenment. After 1880, the educational ideal was increasingly replaced by a view of the press as a representative institution – something that Hampton, drawing on radical press history, largely rejects.

His chapter in this volume can be read as an account-settling epilogue to his book. In effect, he concludes that the twentieth-century press may not have measured up to the unreal expectations of Victorian visionaries, nor fulfilled the heroic destiny assigned to it in Whig history, yet neither should the press’s democratic role be written off as an illusion. There were times during the twentieth century – most notably during the South African War, the onset of the Cold War in the 1940s and the 1970s debate about economic management – when the British press offered multiple perspectives. This enriched public debate and manifestly contributed to the functioning of democracy.

Some liberal historians also argue that the educational mission of the press may have faltered, but it was absorbed by radio and television. The rise of public service broadcasting, it is claimed, diminished the knowledge gap between elites and the general public, aided reciprocal communication between social groups and fostered the development of a public interestoriented, policy-based discourse of democratic debate.⁵

The countercharge to this is that public service broadcasting was locked into a paternalistic style of journalism, a view that is in effect endorsed in Hugh Chignell’s essay in this book. However, his contention is that BBC radio introduced more popular styles of journalism, particularly during the 1960s, in response to social change, competition and the possibilities created by new technology. This popularization produced a furious reaction from elite critics, who were placated in the 1970s by the development of a more analytical, research-based form of journalism on BBC Radio 4. The implication of this study is that the BBC learnt to develop different registers of journalism, which responded to the divergent orientations of different audiences.

Liberal media historians usually shrug off criticism by ignoring it. Both Hampton and Chignell are unusual in that they incorporate critical arguments from different intellectual traditions. In doing so, they provide more guarded and persuasive liberal histories.

Feminist challenge

The dominance of the liberal narrative is now challenged by the rise of feminist media history. This argues that the media did not become fully ‘independent’ when they became free of government, because they remained under male control. And far from empowering the people, the media contributed to the oppression of half the population. This feminist interpretation is thus not merely different from the liberal one but directly contradicts it.

It comes out of a historical tradition that documents the subordination of women in the early modern period when wives, without ready access to divorce, could be lawfully beaten and confined by their husbands, and when women did not have the same social standing or legal rights as men. It describes the struggle for women’s emancipation and advance as a qualified success story in which women gained new legal protections, greater independence and improved opportunities, but in a context where there is not yet full gender equality. Its account of the development of media history is told as an accompaniment to this narrative.

Feminist media history is now the fastest growing version of media history. So, this return visit will focus primarily on recent feminist media research that is revising the pioneer version of feminist media history.

This pioneer version argued that popular media indoctrinated women into accepting a subordinate position in society. It did this primarily by portraying men and women as having different social roles, with men as breadwinners and women as mothers and housewives. As the Ladies Cabinet, a leading women’s journal, apostrophized in 1847: woman ‘is given to man as his better angel…to make home delightful and life joyous’ and serve as a ‘mother to make citizens for earth’ (cited in White 1970: 42). This understanding of the proper role of women was justified in terms of the ‘natural’ differences between the sexes, established by divine providence. During the course of the nineteenth century, this gender discourse was given a turbo-boost by being articulated to discourses of class and progress. Images of femininity were linked to those of elegant affluence, while understandings of domestic duty were associated with the moral improvement of society. Traditional gender norms were upheld by family custom, peer group pressure and education, and rendered still more coercive by being reproduced in mass entertainment – including media produced especially for women.

This pioneer version also stresses the underlying continuity of media representations of gender from the nineteenth century through to the late twentieth century. The main concerns of women were defined, according to this account, as courtship, marriage, motherhood, home-making and looking good. There were minor shifts of emphasis over the years (for example, a stress on being a professional housewife and mother in the 1930s, ‘make do and mend’ in the 1940s and ‘shop and spend’ in the 1950s). But the central message remained, it is argued, essentially the same. Women’s concerns were projected as being primarily romantic and domestic; men and women were depicted as being innately different; and women who transgressed gender norms were generally portrayed in an unfavourable light. The functionalist cast of this argument is typified by Janet Thumim’s analysis of postwar film. ‘Our exploration of popular films’, she concludes, ‘shows that screen representations in the period 1945–65 performed a consistently repressive function in respect of women. There are, simply, no depictions of autonomous, independent women either inside or outside the structure of the family, who survive unscathed at the narrative’s close’ (Thumim 1992: 210). Popular media, in short, consistently sustained patriarchy.

This stress on the continuity of social control is now being challenged within the feminist tradition. First, revisionist research is drawing attention to women’s active resistance to patriarchal domination through the creation of their own media.⁶ In particular, Michelle Tusan shows that a women’s press grew out of a dense matrix of women’s associations and single-issue campaigns in Victorian Britain. Originating in the 1850s, the women’s press confounded Lord Northcliffe’s observation that ‘women can’t write and don’t want to read’ (cited in Tusan 2005: 99) by gaining a significant readership before the First World War. Its leading publications reported news that was not covered in the mainstream press, developed women-centred political agendas and advanced alternative understandings of society. Even when the women’s press was in decline during the 1920s, it still boasted the early Time and Tide, a weekly that published a satirical ‘Man’s Page’ and thoughtful commentary by leading feminists from Vi...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of illustrations
• Acknowledgements
• Notes on contributors
• Foreword
• Editor’s introduction
• 1. Narratives of media history revisited
• SECTION I. The liberal narrative
• SECTION II. The feminist narrative
• SECTION III. The populist narrative
• SECTION IV. The libertarian narrative
• SECTION V. The anthropological narrative
• SECTION VI. The radical narrative
• SECTION VII. The technological determinist narrative
• Bibliography
• Index