ABSTRACT
Like all persuasive mythologies, the Whig interpretation of press history contains a particle of truth. A section of the commercial press did become more independent of government in the period between 1760 and 1860, partly as a consequence of the growth of advertising. This additional revenue reduced dependence, in some cases, on party subsidy; encouraged papers to reject covert secret service grants (the last English newspaper to receive one was the Observer in 1840); improved the wages and security of employment of some journalists so that they became less biddable; and financed greater expenditure on news gathering, enabling newspapers to become less reliant on official sources and more reluctant to trade their independence in return for prior government briefing. 1 This last shift was symbolized by The Times’s magisterial declaration in 1834 that it would no longer accept early information from government offices since this was inconsistent with ‘the pride and independence of our journal’, and anyway its ‘own information was earlier and surer’. 2
