Visions of the Press in Britain, 1850-1950 (review)

Visions of the Press in Britain makes a significant addition to the historiography of media studies and establishes its author as a major scholar in the field. Hampton has written an intellectual and cultural history of the British press, a "think piece" which sets out to place this crucial period of British journalism in a broad social and analytical context. At the same time, he insures the relevance of the book to the current debate about the press by touching upon issues such as privacy, the effects of advertising, press consolidation, and the role and impact of public opinion.

Hampton relies primarily on the press writings of "elite" thinkers, a choice that is in my judgment a little too limited. But he argues his thesis with considerable panache and subtlety. He maintains that during the mid-nineteenth century, the heyday of Victorian journalism, an optimistic, educational ideal of the press prevailed. This drew upon the writings of John Stuart Mill and other liberals who urged free expression and a diversity of opinions in the belief that in this way truth would have the best opportunity to rise to the top. Such a rational interchange of ideas offered the opportunity to enlighten the working classes and prepare them for self-government. At its best this ideal validated the influence of quality newspapers like The Times, in whose pages parliamentary and financial news predominated along with well-written leaders.

By the 1880s the very nature of journalism had begun to shift dramatically and according to Hampton a representative theory of the press slowly and fitfully replaced the educational one. During the years following the 1880s the circulation of newspapers greatly increased and news coverage was extended to many areas of popular choice including sports, gossip, and crime. Subjects thought to be of particular interest to women readers were featured on special pages and press agencies provided synopses of events. This New Journalism (as it came to be known in Britain) was dependent upon advertising and heavy capitalization and drew significantly upon American models, characterized by an emphasis on speed and human interest. Hampton contends that the representative ideal of these decades, which extended broadly to the 1920s, was rooted in an organic pessimism and that the essential difference from earlier journalism was that readers were now spoken for, or "represented," rather than encouraged to make authentic choices for themselves. This was the famous model of a "Fourth Estate" of the realm in which, in its most extreme version, the press was conceived as a substitute for parliament.

Hampton demonstrates in a highly sophisticated way that by the middle of the twentieth century both strands of media theory had been melded into a third view of the press which essentially represented the interests of the great proprietors, such as Lords Rothermere and Beaverbrook. This ideal, which was not as clearly enunciated as its predecessors, justified itself on libertarian grounds and fought vigorously both against state control of newspapers and critics on the left like Harold Laski who attacked the undue concentration of wealth and power in newspaper ownership. In his final chapter, Hampton focuses on the Royal Commission on the Press (1947–49) and shows how evolving views of journalism, paralleling a century of unprecedented economic and social transformation, created a modern perception of the press that, for the most part, has tended to become overwhelmingly negative. Yet he makes clear that both defenders and critics of this contemporary journalism, with its tabloid excesses and heavy focus on light matter and "celebrity journalism," need to understand the antecedents of the current debate if they are to participate intelligently in it.

Hampton's book does not make significant use of the newspapers themselves. But this is not necessarily a weakness, for he draws effectively upon the views of scores of journalists, proprietors, and others connected with the press, and incorporates numerous references from novels, caricatures, and, when dealing with the 1930s, from the valuable...