ABSTRACT
Both in the United States and in Britain, newspapers are subject to economic and political pressures. Legal institutions and cultural expectations have made the media incomparably more powerful in the United States than in Britain. In Britain the press is exempt from taxing sales and advertising, and consequently enjoys a fiscal advantage worth five to ten percent of total revenue. Competition from alternative news sources, technological constraints, and the need to woo advertisers all pose serious problems for the press in Britain and the United States. The skew in the American and British press can be explained in terms of their tendency to adjust to market forces. In addition to the right to designate documents as Classified, the British state has at its disposal panoply of measures designed to protect it from the investigations of the press. The American press thus enjoys greater power and prestige than does the British press.
