Page 219 - Comparing Media Systems THREE MODELS OF MEDIA AND POLITICS

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The North Atlantic or Liberal Model

the poor. These repressive measures did not, in fact, prevent the devel-
opment of a substantial radical press. Prosecutions for seditious libel or
other press crimes often boosted the circulation of radical publications,
and radical unstamped newspapers and pamphlets – the most celebrated
being Cobbett’s Political Register – reached impressive levels of circula-
tion during the early nineteenth century (Curran 1979; Chalaby 1998).
These restrictions did, however, delay the development of the commer-
cial mass-circulation press in Britain until the 1850s.
British press institutions – both journalistic practices and the legal
framework – were exported in most of their essentials to the colonies
in North America, as well as to Ireland (where London newspapers ac-
counted for much of newspaper circulation before independence). With
the American revolution, however, the United States moved further in
the direction of press freedom. Stamp duties had been extended to the
American colonies by the British parliament in 1765 (some colonies had
earlier instituted their own “taxes on knowledge”), but this became one
of the principal points of conflict between Britain and the colonies, and
the stamp duties were repealed even before the American Declaration
of Independence. The First Amendment to the United States Constitu-
tion subsequently made press freedom a fundamental legal principle,
though press freedom in the modern sense did not emerge immedi-
ately. In earliest years of the American republic there was considerable
ambiguity about the meaning of the First Amendment. It was often in-
terpreted narrowly, either as leaving the regulation of the press to the
states rather than the federal government (it reads, “Congress shall make
no law ... abridging the freedom of speech or of the press”), or as refer-
ring to the traditional English principle of press freedom, which forbade
“prior restraint” in the form of licensing or censorship, but did not ex-
clude the punishment of publishers for such crimes as seditious libel
or insulting government officials (Levy 1985). A broader “libertarian”
interpretation emerged during the controversy over the Sedition Act
of 1798, which made it a crime to publish anything that would “bring
into disrepute” the federal government. The Sedition Act was allowed to
lapse after the opposition won the election of 1800: the libertarian the-
ory emerged along with the development of competing political parties,
a political structure not intended by those who wrote the constitution.
There would be many subsequent conflicts over the meaning and limits
of freedom of the press. During World War I, for example, radical publi-
cations were banned from the mails and foreign-language publications
were required to submit English translations to the government. In 1925

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