88 | Mass Media and Historical Change
Demarcation lines between politics and journalism continued to be quite
fluid. The enhanced position of the media actually strengthened journalistic
presence in politics. Even in Great Britain, where journalism had freed itself
from party ties at a very early date, the number of journalists with seats in the
House of Commons grew, and by 1906 they were the third largest vocational
group, especially among Liberals and Irish Nationalists (Lee 1976: 199, 294).
In France, where the relationship between political parties and journalists was
particularly close, about one-third of all delegates during the Third Republic
had journalistic experience. In Germany, where journalists were not held in
very high esteem, this applied to barely 10 per cent of Reichstag delegates
during the time of the German Empire, and most of those were Social Dem-
ocrats (Requate 1995: 90, 291). But leading politicians from other parties
also had journalistic backgrounds – like Eugen Richter (Liberal), Matthias
Erzberger (Centre) and Wilhelm von Hammerstein (Conservative). This was
another factor that facilitated the adaptation of media communication within
politics.
Nevertheless, heads of large publishing houses during these decades seldom
held leading positions in politics, although their journalistic power increased
tremendously at the end of the nineteenth century. In the United States, espe-
cially in New York, publishers like Joseph Pulitzer and William R. Hearst
owned the papers with the biggest circulation. In London, Cyril Pearson of the
Morning Leader Group, and even more prominently Lord Northcliffe, con-
trolled over two-thirds of total circulation (Lee 1976: 293). In Germany this
concentration in the hands of a few was evident both in Berlin, whose news-
paper market was controlled by Ullstein, Mosse and Scherl, as well as in other
good-sized cities, where the ‘Gazette King’ August Huck owned about a dozen
papers. The big German publishers exerted their political influence mainly
through the ideological tenor of their newspapers, whether liberally inclined
(Mosse, Ullstein) or conservative (Scherl). Not until the Weimar Republic did
a German media mogul and party leader come to prominence in the person
of Alfred Hugenberg, who in 1928 took over the leadership of the conserva-
tive DNVP. In other countries the desire for political power manifested itself
earlier. In the United States, William R. Hearst not only had himself voted
into Congress but also tried to get the Democratic nomination for President,
albeit without success. In like manner, Lord Northcliffe ran on the Conser-
vative ticket in the 1890s and bought up a newspaper in his election district
expressly in order to support his campaign. Only after they had failed in their
political ambitions did these publishers restrict themselves to exerting political
influence primarily through their contacts and their publications.
Faced with this challenge, many governments changed their manner of
dealing with the press. Repression increasingly gave way to attempts at influ-
encing journalists through informal contacts. Files in Great Britain document