Press baronsA B C D E F G H IJKL M N O P R S T U VXYZWthe Finger: Islam and Muslims in the British Media
(One World, 2011).
Press See journalism; news values; news-
papers, origins; northcliffe revolution;
photojournalism; press barons. See also
topic guides under audiences: consump-
tion & reception of media; media history;
media institutions; media issues &
debates; media: power, effects, influence;
news media.
Press barons As early as 1884, Scots-American
steel magnate Andrew Carnegie headed a
syndicate that controlled eight daily papers and
ten weeklies. In the UK Edward Lloyd owned
the mass-circulation Daily Chronicle and the
blockbuster Sunday paper Lloyd’s Weekly, the
fi rst periodical to sell a million copies. As the
costs of founding and running newspapers grew,
leaving ownership a privilege of none but the
very rich, or joint stock companies, the trend
towards chain ownership accelerated.
In The Life and Death of the Press Barons
(Secker and Warburg, 1982), Piers Brendon
points out that ‘the press barons of the New
World, stimulated by the tradition of freedom
and protected by constitutional guarantees, were
wilder beasts than their Old World counter-
parts’; but they shared characteristics with UK
press barons, being ‘vicious, unstable, despotic
...’ and sharing a ‘ruthless quest for wealth, power
and independence’. However, in Brendon’s view,
‘their refusal to endure restraints on journalistic
freedom was a real boon’, despite their being
‘armour-plated sabre-toothed behemoths’.
James Gordon Bennett (1795–1872), perhaps
the first press baron, compared himself to
Moses, Seneca, Socrates and Martin Luther, and
ranked his own genius as a newspaper baron
with Shakespeare, Scott, Milton and Byron. He
handed over the New York Tribune in 1868 to his
son of the same name: James Gordon Bennett Jr
matched his father’s outrageous eccentricity as
well as demonstrating, in Brendon’s words, ‘fl air,
enterprise and decision’.
Th en came the heavyweight contestants Joseph
Pulitzer (1847–1911), proprietor of the New York
World, referred to as His Majesty by his staff ,
and William Randoph Hearst (1863–1932) whose
Journal and other newspapers, spreading as they
did throughout America, made their owner ‘the
most vilifi ed press baron in history’.
Generous supplies of egotism, eccentricity and
paranoia were to be found in UK press barons,
such as Alfred Harmsworth, later Lord North-
cliff e (1865–1922), whose admiration for Pulitzer
was reciprocated to the point where Pulitzersocial, political and cultural values of the time,
symbolizing and reinforced by the interests of
the dominant hierarchy.
Th e framing, cropping, captioning and juxta-
position of the photograph with text all serve
to close-off the reader from lateral, or indepen-
dent, interpretations of the picture – from aber-
rant decoding of the message. Th us closure
is achieved. Th e term has come to be applied
to message systems generally. See dominant,
subordinate, radical; mediation; poly-
semy. See also topic guide under audiences:
consumption & reception of media.
Prejudice Phillip G. Zimbardo and Michael R.
Leippe in The Psychology of Attitude Change
and Social Infl uence (McGraw-Hill, 1991) defi ne
prejudice as ‘a learned attitude towards a target
object that typically involves negative affect,
dislike or fear, a set of negative beliefs that
support the attitude and a behavioural intention
to avoid, or to control or dominate, those in the
target group’. Such an attitude may be directed
towards ideas, objects, situations or people.
Prejudice is arguably of greatest concern when it
is negative and directed towards other people. In
this instance prejudice is often accompanied by
negative stereotypes of its targets.
The targets of prejudice tend to be those
who are the relatively powerless members of
groups, organizations, or societies as well as
those who are perceived as being deviant. It is of
course possible to be both. One aspect of media
research is the exploration of whether or not
the media plays a role in promoting prejudice
against some groups, cultures or nationalities.
Gordon Allport in The Nature of Prejudice
(Addison-Wesley, 1954) identifies five stages
in the behavioural component of prejudice:
anti-locution, avoidance, discrimination,
physical attack and extermination. Examples
of anti-locution include insults and so-called
jokes (in which the intention is to denigrate the
subject). Avoidance of communication, though
a more passive demonstration of prejudice,
will tend to ensure that negative beliefs and
attitudes are unchallenged by contact. Th e term
discrimination is normally used to describe the
acting-out of prejudice, which often shows itself
in communicative behaviour. Rejection shown
in communicative behaviour may be a precursor
to physical attack and extermination. See devi-
ance; ethnocentrism; folk devils; gender;
labelling process (and the media); moral
panics and the media; norms; other;
racism.
▶Julian Petley and Robin Richardson, eds, Pointing