The Media during the Cold War | 145police brutality that would have completely discredited the SED regime
(Czaplicki 2000). Then there was the construction that the media placed on a
press conference held on 8 November 1989 by Günter Schabowski in front of
television cameras. A member of the ZK, (Zentralkomitee, central committee),
he mistakenly announced the immediate opening of the border and this led
indirectly to a premature fall of the Berlin Wall.
Media and the Establishment of Democracy in West Germany
After 1945, Western Europe experienced a multifaceted transformation of its
media landscape. The Western Allies reorganised the media systems in the
occupied countries with a view to establishing democracy. Yet there were also
changes in countries not under occupation. At the time, the experience of war
and growing fear of Communism had led to growing attempts by the states
to exercise control over the media, and by so doing, promote national unity.
In liberated France, for example, the media experienced an increase in state
ownership, control and subsidies, and in the process private radio stations were
nationalised because they had collaborated with the Germans. Radio broad-
casting was monopolised and largely monitored by the state in form of the
newly established ‘Radiodiffusion Française’ (RDF; and after 1949: ‘Radiodif-
fusion-Télévision Française’, RTF). Equally marked was the influence of the
French state on the newly established news agency ‘Agence France-Presse’ as
well as on those segments of the press that received state subsidies. Structural
changes were also at work in the print media. Many publishers who had col-
laborated with the Germans were removed. As it had above all been the Pari-
sian press that the Germans had exploited for their own ends, the provincial
press now experienced an upswing (Kuhn 2002: 27).
A glance at Italy makes clear exactly how the adaptation of Western role
models after 1945 was carried out in an opinionated and pro-government
manner. The Italians launched a broadcasting system modelled on the BBC
and subject to public law, but after a brief phase of anti-Fascist consensus, the
Christian Democratic government exerted direct centralistic influence on the
stations RAI (Radio Audizioni Italia) and RAI-TV (Televisione Italia) respec-
tively, that belonged to a state holding company. Since the Italians got most of
their information from the radio, this was of great political significance. There
was a certain continuity in print media, which were less popular; newspapers
were polarised along party lines and former Fascists were rarely dismissed, so
the old structures survived (Mancini 2005: 30–35). The fact that newspapers
were mainly owned by industrial corporations strengthened the media’s affinity
with the Christian Democrats and cemented their dominance into the 1980s.