Jörg Requate

Media Power and Politics. The Political Ambitions of Major Newspaper Owners – Hearst, Northcliffe, Beaverbrook and Hugenberg in Comparison

The relation between economic power and a political influence difficult to define lay at the foundations of the aura – in part fascinating, in part threatening – which surrounded the press barons of the first half of the 20^th century. This essay does not seek to provide the reasons for the influence of the major press companies in general; instead it focuses on the question of which political ambitions the bosses of the major newspaper corporations held for themselves and the extent to which they were successful in fulfilling those ambitions. The comparative method allows a view of »the media« much less as an »absolute« factor of power and more as one embedded in respective national political constellations and national press traditions and which could therefore vary in effectiveness. One central argument is thus that for those press entrepreneurs who held political ambitions – such as William Randolph Hearst, the British Lords Northcliffe, Rothermere or Beaverbrook as well as Alfred Hugenberg – there were considerable structural problems for transforming their journalistic influence into direct political power. For Hearst or Northcliffe, whose influence, not to mention their papers’ economic success, was based on their claim to being politically independent, their striving for political office placed this success at risk and, in turn, threatened the basis of their potential political influence. Alfred Hugenberg too, who had established his newspaper empire specifically for party political purposes, failed in the end to transform his journalistic influence into political power. This is not to argue that the influence of major newspaper companies has been exaggerated. Nonetheless, on the one hand it should be emphasised that the power of a media entrepreneur is based not least on the fact that others believe in this power. This in no way minimises the »real« influence but indicates that such a belief needs to be maintained. On the other hand, the examples used show that it was obviously easier to apply journalistic influence against existing governments that to use that influence – at least as long as freedom of the press ruled – to exploit it as a basis of political execution of power.