The Integration of Findings

The (first) Crimean War in the mid-19th century (1854–1865) is considered one of the very first media wars − or press wars, to be more precise (cf. e.g. Keller, 2001; Lambert & Badsey, 1994). For the first time, a new type of observation and reporting on war events developed that quickly proved itself to be a viable business model: The war reporter as an authentic ‘eyewitness’ used classic print magazines to report on distant wars; initially, reports were aimed primarily at citizens of the nations involved in the war. That type of reporting had never been seen before, and it was made possible by the development of telegraph technology. This evolution was particularly dynamic in England, which was involved in the Crimean War and at the time was already a society without media censorship, ¹ with a fully commercialized media landscape and with the existence of a correspondingly large audience. Further, the government was afraid of war reporting from the very beginning because even in these early years it showed strong effects on public opinion, and the pressure on political decision-makers arising from war reporting was considered to be extremely high from the outset (cf. e.g. Hudson, 1995).