The Media and the Road to Modernity | 67French newspapers or pamphlets. On occasion they even invoked the struggle
for freedom as justification for violence, sophistically rationalised events or
blamed the consequences of the Revolution on a failure to implement reforms
(Koch, in ibid.: 242). German newspapers thus voiced criticism and took
sides. Some addressed themselves specifically to the lower classes by present-
ing events occurring in France in dialogue form. Even the Intelligenzblätter
became more political (Böning 1999).
Having first encouraged a flowering of journalistic discourse across Europe,
the French Revolution was now to blame for its Europe-wide restriction after
the mid-1790s. Primarily responsible for this was the fear of revolt common
to all governments. It was hardly surprising that Austria in particular tight-
ened censorship after 1793 and revived the Police Bureau for Press Surveil-
lance at Court. Even reading rooms were forbidden. At the same time, urged
by the Imperial Court, Prussia also passed new laws against ‘seditious writ-
ings’. However, local research has shown that this mainly served to increase
self-censorship and did not necessarily result in a significant increase in the
number of prison sentences (Reinalter, in Böning 1992: 19; Hagelweide, in
ibid.: 252–55). Consequences were much more severe in the regions occupied
by Napoleon. In the counties of the Rhine Federation he had most of the
newspapers shut down, and the remaining ones often had to be published in
two languages. In occupied states like Württemberg, political reports could
come only from official sources like Le Moniteur. All serious newspapers had to
comply with this ruling, and in Baden only a single newspaper was permitted
(Schneider 1966: 175f.). The consequences were a deterioration of content as
well as a huge decrease in circulation. By 1806 at the latest, licensing and cen-
sorship modelled on French practices had led to heavy restrictions in occupied
Italy (Smith 1979: 92). The French Moniteur thus became the reference point
for a new type of centralised media system for large parts of Europe.
Even in the mother countries of press freedom there were certain restric-
tions. In England the French Revolution led to a general conservative back-
lash in the 1790s. In its wake the government of William Pitt once more
raised taxes on newspapers to prevent the dissemination of radical writings,
ruled that mastheads must contain the printers’ address, and sponsored
papers loyal to the regime (Barker 2000: 69f.). To make matters worse,
the number of indictments and prison sentences for journalists increased.
Even in the United States, where freedom of the press had just recently been
declared, freedom of opinion was restricted in 1798 by penalizing ‘false,
scandalous, and malicious writing’ against the government, the administra-
tion and the Congress. This led to about twenty-five arrests before the law
was repealed four years later. Ultimately criticism of these restrictions served
to strengthen press freedom in the United States during the nineteenth
century (Lewis 2008: 21).