Page 218 - Comparing Media Systems THREE MODELS OF MEDIA AND POLITICS

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The Three Models

a powerful boost to the practice of reading secular literature. By the early
eighteenth century the English political system had been fundamentally
changed. The king or queen could rule only through a majority in Parlia-
ment, which controlled public finance – previously inseparable from the
royal household; approved the appointment of ministers; and had the
exclusive right to remove judges. Extensive royal control of the economy
and traditional guild privileges had given way to laissez faire economic
policy. Religious toleration had advanced substantially. And with the
expiration of the Licensing Act in 1695, a major step had been taken
toward the development of press freedom. In terms of political culture,
as Hill (1961: 3) puts it, “politics had become a rational inquiry, dis-
cussed in terms of utility, experience, common sense, no longer in terms
of Divine Right, texts, antiquarian research.” The development during
this period of political parties and of the division between government
and opposition in Parliament had particularly important consequences
for media history. “From Queen Anne’s reign, politicians excluded from
power consistently used the press to mobilize public opinion and put
pressure on successive administrations. This in turn provoked a barrage
of counter-propaganda, and money raised by subscription or extracted
from public funds was injected into the London press from both sides”
(Harris 1978: 95). The first daily, the Daily Courant, was financed by the
government as part of this pattern of political competition.
The expiration of the Licensing Act in 1695 resulted in a proliferation
of newspapers, twenty in London in the following decade and some in
the provinces as well. Political elites were uncomfortable with unchecked
expansion of the press, however, and after a number of failed attempts
by the government to reinstitute licensing, the Stamp Act of 1712
imposed taxes on newspapers, pamphlets, advertisements, and paper,
resulting in an immediate drop in the number of newspapers in circu-
lation. The stamp duties were raised and tightened in 1789, in 1797 –
following a great upsurge in radical political activity that saw massive
increases in the circulation of political literature – and again in 1815 and
1819. The same transformation of English society that led to emergence
of parliamentary rule also included the enclosure movement, the elim-
ination of old economic controls and privileges, and the expansion of
industrialcapitalism,andproducedgrowingeconomicinequalityandan
expansion of the urban and rural poor. Both the “taxes on knowledge”
and other controls on the press – prosecutions for seditious libel, for
example – were motivated to a large extent by fear of the propertied
classes that expansion of the press would lead to political rebellion by

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