The Media and the Road to Modernity | 89written correspondence and personal meetings between politicians and jour-
nalists, and many publishers were given titles (Brown 1985: 193). In France
and Germany, journalistic bribery can be documented up to the late nine-
teenth century. Under Bismarck the government paid numerous journal-
ists and pro-government newspapers honoraria out of the so-called ‘Reptile
Fund’ taken from the confiscated fortune of the Guelph family (Wetzel 1975;
Kohnen 1995: 159). Bismarck’s successors endowed individual journalists
with considerable sums of money as well. The government also subsidised
WTB, the leading news agency, and issued a news summary called ‘Provinzial
Correspondenz’ for the provincial press at a moderate price.
The Viennese government pursued a similar strategy with its Österreichische
Correspondenz, granting it privileged access to telegraph messages (Kohnen
1995: 154; G. Stöber 2000: 60–63). In view of the new popular press, however,
these hidden payments became less important. They were also getting too
risky, after scandals attending the systematic bribing of journalists in France,
Italy and Germany during the 1880s were disclosed to the public (Hibberd
2008: 27; Bösch 2009: 343–61).
Future researchers would do well to examine more closely the way govern-
ments adapted their communication styles to the specific logics of the media.
From the 1880s, leading members of the British parliament developed an
organised form of ‘lobby journalism’, whereby chosen journalists could obtain
sensitive information (Sparrow 2003). The German chancellor Bismarck had
already cultivated close informal contacts with individual journalists, and even
after his resignation attempted to carry on with politics by means of ‘discreet
indiscretions’ leaked to the press. After 1900 the Chancellor Bernhard von
Bülow stopped prosecuting the press and instead opted for active dialogue.
Like many of his ministers of state, he deliberately gave the illustrated jour-
nals access to his private life, permitting them to photograph him during his
holidays with his wife and his dogs. His press secretary Otto Hammann con-
sequently became one of his closest associates. In the same way other members
of the Reichstag regularly granted off-the-record talks to journalists of like
persuasion in order to feed them information about their positions. On the
other hand the government had little success in its attempts to build up a
coordinated public relations sector; only the ministries of Foreign Affairs and
the Navy were reasonably successful (Jungblut 1994).
It would also be advisable to examine more closely the interaction between
media and political parties. Since most parties, with the exception of the Social
Democrats, initially had no detailed party manifestos, their near- and mid-
dle-term guidelines were developed by the newspapers affiliated with them.
By the same token the parties of that time (again excepting the Social Dem-
ocrats) were still without stable organisational or membership structures. For
this reason, party-affiliated newspapers formed the connecting link with the