ABSTRACT
The era of the press barons is often seen as a maverick interlude in the development of the press, when newspapers became subject to the whims and caprices of their owners. According to this view, the press barons built vast press empires and ruled them like personal fiefdoms. In the hands of men like Beaverbrook and Rothermere, newspapers became mere ‘engines of propaganda’, manipulated in order to further their political ambitions. As Stanley Baldwin declared in a memorable sentence (suggested to him by his cousin, Rudyard Kipling), ‘What proprietorship of these papers is aiming at is power, and power without responsibility – the prerogative of the harlot throughout the ages.’ The despotic rule of the press barons is usually compared unfavourably
with a preceding ‘golden age’ when proprietors played an inactive role and ‘sovereign’ editors conducted their papers in a responsible manner. In some accounts, too, the era of Northcliffe and Rothermere is contrasted with the period after the Second World War when journalists became more educated, independent and professional. The press barons have thus become favourite bogeymen: their indictment has become a way of celebrating the editorial integrity of newspapers, both past and present. But in reality the reign of the press barons did not constitute an excep-
tional pathology in the evolution of the press, but merely a continuation of tendencies already present before. Indeed, insofar as the barons may be said to have been innovators, it is not for the reasons that are generally given. They did not break with tradition by using their papers for political propaganda; their distinctive contribution was rather that they downgraded propaganda in favour of entertainment. Nor did they subvert the role of the press as a fourth estate; on the contrary it was they who detached the commercial press from the political parties and, consequently, from the state. What actually happened is, in some ways, the exact opposite of historical mythology.1
