Britain’s Imperial Press System
This chapter examines the twentieth-century British press in its imperial and transnational contexts. It demonstrates how Britain's imperial press system, which developed during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to allow news to flow around the British empire, increasingly failed to serve British geopolitical interests from the mid-twentieth century onwards. It considers the relationship between the British government and the news agency Reuters, and the role of the Empire Press Union. It argues that although contemporary journalists often emphasised the importance of the ideal of press freedom when talking about their profession, state intervention in the affairs of news agencies represents a significant thread in the history of the twentieth-century British press.