Shaping a Democratic Press: Allied Media Policies and West German Journalists, 1945–52

This presentation will begin with an analysis of the efforts of the High Commissions, but with the actual work of some American and British officials to implement them at the grass-roots level and to nudge West German journalists to adopt Anglo-American practices, e.g., the separation of news and opinion in their writings. The paper will also look at the positive as well as critical reactions to these efforts on the part of a number of prominent journalists when they faced the task of having to wrestle not only with how to interpret a horrific Nazi past, but also with how to shape the political, ethical, and cultural orientation of postwar West German society. The overall question will therefore be how the West Germans got out of the Third Reich and what interactions developed between some of its most influential voices in the two major press centers of Frankfurt and Hamburg and the American and British officers charged with supervising Allied media policies.