Supporters of the “European integration process” often complain about the media. Ever since the 1950s, they have been claiming that journalists do not pay enough attention to (Western) European integration, publish only negative stories about “Europe” and fail to cover the EU from a genuinely “European perspective.” In his memoirs, Jean Monnet commented that at the time of the Schuman Declaration in 1950, few journalists had recognised the true “significance of the declaration, the technical aspects of which tended to obscure its political importance.”1 In 1975, Marcell von Donat, a spokesman for the European Community, criticised journalists who, he alleged, filed only negative stories from Brussels, while ignoring any positive news. As he put it, “the image is [always] negative.”2 In an influential article published in 1993, the German sociologist Jürgen Gerhards lamented that compared to politicians and economic actors, the media were “lagging behind” when it came to “Europeanisation.”3 EU officials have regularly expressed outrage regarding the “Euro-bashing” of the British tabloids. Studies of the media’s coverage of the Euro crisis have focused on the persistence of national perspectives and stereotypes.4 Over the past decades, both intellectual debate and scholarly research have thus concentrated on the obstacles that nationally organised media allegedly pose to European integration, and how these obstacles might be overcome. In particular, such debate and scholarship have considered the role that media might play in the construction of a European identity, and in the creation of a more legitimate and democratic EU.
This book argues that such normative debates and scholarship have overlooked the fact that the post-war Western European media made essential contributions to European integration. By reconstructing the rise of Euro-journalism within the Western European media, the book will demonstrate how journalists helped to create and to shape the European Union, both as the sui generis supranational polity, and as the incarnation of the Europe that we know today. The book will argue that the central position that European integration and the EU today occupy in European public discourse is not the logical outcome of the union’s “singularity” or of the “progress” of the integration process. To the contrary, the book will argue that this central position was—at least in part—the result of a remarkable transformation in the portrayal of the European Communities within the Western European media between the 1950s and the 1970s. This transformation was pioneered by a group of Euro-journalists, who were supportive of European integration through supranationalism and of the European Communities. These Euro-journalists did not act alone. Indeed, they were integrated into and cooperated closely with pro-European circles in politics, business and academia. During the 1950s, the media initially presented the European Coal and Steel Community, the European Economic Community and EURATOM as technocratic institutions, virtually indistinguishable from the many other international organisations that promoted Western European cooperation. By the late 1970s, however, the Western European media had begun to frame the Communities as the sole representative of European integration, and as the embodiment of a coherent democratic European polity. It is the story of this astonishing transformation that provides the subject of this study.
According to this book, the pioneers of the transformation of the European Communities were the Euro-journalists. They worked as economic and foreign affairs journalists in the editorial departments of major Western European media outlets. During the 1950s and early 1960s, such Euro-journalists embraced European integration through supranationalism and the ECSC, EEC and EURATOM. They adopted the Euro-narrative that was then developing among advocates of Western European Integration à la EEC, including within political parties, government administrations, academia, business, civil society, and, most particularly, the Community institutions themselves. This Euro-narrative portrayed the European Communities as the only legitimate incarnation of European integration and of Europe. It claimed that the Communities constituted sui generis institutions, rather than ordinary international organisations. Moreover, the narrative held that supranational integration via the Communities was the precondition for peace, prosperity and the continued relevance of Europe on the international scene. Finally, the narrative framed integration as an essentially forward-moving process, which stood under the constant threat of stagnation or crisis. The Euro-journalists, along with their pro-European associates in politics, bureaucracy, business, universities and the institutions of the Community, introduced this sui generis narrative into the Western European media, where it initially had to compete with alternative visions of European unity and cooperation. Moreover, they also related the Euro-narrative to the domestic foreign and economic policy debates that were taking place within their own respective countries.
During the 1960s, Euro-journalism and its corresponding Euro-narrative were in the ascendant within Western European journalism and media. This was due to the campaigning of the pioneering Euro-journalists and their allies. The expansion of the EEC and the changing international context also played a pivotal role.
Starting from the early 1970s, Euro-journalism became the interpretative framework through which the mainstream Western European media interpreted European integration. Together with other Western European elites, journalists promoted European integration and the European Community before the Western European publics. They helped to infuse the Community with symbolic value, and to present it as something bigger than it actually was. Indeed, it was this kind of symbolically charged media coverage of the European Council and the first direct European Parliamentary elections in 1979 that contributed to the emergence of the European Community as a coherent democratic polity in the second half of the 1970s. Arguably, this moment marked the final triumph of Euro-journalism.
Definitions
This book uses the term Euro-journalism to define the type of advocacy journalism that supported the European Communities, and which today supports the EU. Initially a marginal phenomenon during the 1950s, Euro-journalism has since the 1970s become the hegemonic interpretative framework through which most (Western) European journalists interpret the EU. Euro-journalism seeks to educate its audience about the need for European integration via supranationalism and the EEC/EC/EU. It does so by using the Euro-narrative.
By the term Euro-narrative, the book refers to a narrative on the EEC/EC/EU that comprises the three main elements already outlined above. First, the narrative presents the EEC/EC/EU as the incarnation of a European polity, and of Europe itself. It considers these organisations to be the only legitimate form of European integration. Second, it frames the Communities or the EU as a precondition for peace and prosperity within Europe, as well as for Europe’s continuing relevance in the world. Third, the narrative understands European integration, as achieved through the EEC/EC/EU, as a process that must necessarily move forward.
With the term Euro-journalists , the book describes a group of journalists who pioneered Euro-journalism and its Euro-narrative within the Western European media during the 1950s and 1960s. These...