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Contents
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The Where (geography) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Z2
What’s the most interesting “American” city? . . . . . . Z2
What’s the most interesting “British” city? . . . . . . . . Z4
2
The When (history). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Z6
Contemporary America . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Z6
Contemporary Britain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Z10
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The ABCs of British and American Life
(special issues) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Z13
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Paper, Waves, and Bytes (media) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Z29
A few selected websites . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Z45
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What’s the most interesting “American” city?
What’s interesting is of course subjective; what’s “most American” is even more challenging to describe. Perhaps you might
want to answer the question in what seems like an easier way:
based on population. But here too there are problems: should we
take the population of the city within the city limits or the metropolitan area including suburbs or the metropolitan statistical
area? The top three on all lists are the same: New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago. Numbers four to ten of the top ten will vary if
you consider just the population within the city (left column) or
if you consider the metropolitan area (right column).
top ten largest cities in population
st
1
nd
metropolitan areas
New York
New York
Los Angeles
Los Angeles
3rd
Chicago
Chicago
4th
Houston
Dallas
th
2
Phoenix
Philadelphia
th
6
Philadelphia
Houston
7th
San Antonio
Miami
th
San Diego
Washington DC
th
Dallas
Atlanta
th
San Jose
Detroit
5
8
9
10
Detroit
cities
One interesting city at the bottom of the list is Detroit, an example of a city located in the Rust Belt (we’ll mention this again
in just a bit) with its symbolic name Motown linking it both to
music and to motors, Detroit being the headquarters of the Big
Three automobile manufacturers Chrysler, Ford, and General
Motors. Detroit could also represent the future of American cities with projects devoted to the greening of the city − turning old
city blocks into gardens. Detroit is a symbol of America’s urban
past but could also become a symbol of America’s urban future.
Detroit is also making music news with its music scene. It’s not
just the birthplace of Motown music from the 50s and 60s but
of techno too with popular DJs like the Belleville Three calling
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The Where (geography)
Detroit their home. And we’ll be “discovering” another Detroit
connection between the Old and the New Worlds a bit later in
American history.
If you’ve visited many American cities, you’ve probably noticed the lack of a center, common in most German or British
cities, and you’ve no doubt noticed that downtown business areas, which are organized on a grid pattern, are strictly separated
from residential areas in the suburbs, which often have winding
streets. You may have been surprised by the European character of just a few American cities not found in the top ten above
based on population: Boston and San Francisco. You would certainly have been astonished by the ethnic variety of New York
or the wide boulevards and elegant memorials and shopping
malls of Washington DC surrounded by areas of shockingly visible poverty. Maybe you wondered where Los Angeles begins and
ends if you drove down one of the freeways with their unending
stretches of numbingly similar single family houses. You most
certainly would have missed the availability of public transport
in most cities with a population of less than a million or maybe
have enjoyed the luxury of some light rail connections in some
of the environmentally friendlier cities like Portland, Oregon,
or Seattle, Washington. Otherwise American cities seem to have
been built for automobiles rather than for pedestrians. And with
the widespread popularity of shopping malls with chain stores
and huge parking lots, very many American cities have no distinct look in the way that some British and many European cities
do. Thus if you’ve only visited the most popular tourist cities,
you probably won’t be able to easily describe the most “American” city. And trying to find the most “American” city is very
important to people trying to test new products. One city not
found on the lists above and probably not on any tourists’ mustsee lists but often used by testers as the typical American city is
Columbus, Ohio. According to more recent research, America’s
new ideal test city is Albany, New York, another city which is
supposed to mirror the American population but isn’t on the
itinerary of many tourists. The two cities at the very bottom of
the typically American list are at the very top of all tourists’ lists:
San Francisco and New York!
the most American
city?
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What’s the most interesting “British” city?
new and small
ports and resorts
the most British city?
the biggest?
We’ve had some practice now with this kind of question about
American cities, but we’ll have an additional problem with
British cities from the start: the definition of “city” in Britain
is complicated by the fact that the monarch can simply grant
an area “city status.” Some cities have been cities since time immemorial. Others compete each year for the coveted status. Size
doesn’t always play a role. Milton Keynes, founded in the 1960s
to relieve congestion in London, isn’t a city although it currently
has around 200,000 inhabitants while the beautiful city of Wells
with a population of around 10,000 advertises itself as the smallest city in England and has a famous cathedral. A cathedral by
the way is one characteristic of most cities. And London isn’t really a city at all but is made up of lots of little cities like the one
we just saw, the City of Westminster.
Since the sea has always been very important for Britain, we
could pick port cities like Portsmouth in the southeast or Plymouth in the southwest. Other important ports are Bristol, just
across the mouth of the Severn River near the English-Welsh border, and Newcastle, not far from the border to Scotland. Seaside
resorts include Brighton in the south and Blackpool in the northwest. Tourist centers which advertise their historic roots include
York and Chester and Bath. And then there are the ancient university cities of Oxford and Cambridge, both near London.
But would you call any of these cities “British”? They’re all in
England! And what about cities like Glasgow in the west and Edinburgh near the east coast of Scotland? Or Cardiff and Swansea
in Wales or Belfast in Northern Ireland? As you might notice,
there’s a problem with the question itself since city identity like
national identity is problematic in a kingdom made up of four
countries.
Yet another problem lies in determining the population of any
of these cities. The Office for National Statistics of the British government offers complicated tables and charts and terms: “aggregates of the urban and remaining parts of each local authority,”
county, Unitary Authority, and Government Office Region. The
US city limits were much easier to understand for a Top 10 list.
In the UK Top 10 lists of cities depend on just how and where
you draw the limits. At least everyone seems to agree on Britain’s
The Where (geography)
top two and the only two cities with more than one million (although some say that Birmingham actually has a little less than
a million). Other than London and Birmingham, the following
English cities are usually among the top 10 (listed here alphabetically): Bradford, Bristol, Leeds, Leicester, Liverpool, Manchester,
and Sheffield. In Scotland Edinburgh (the capital) and Glasgow
are the largest cities. The largest city in Wales (and the capital),
Cardiff, comes in around 11 or 14 or 15 or 16 of the Top UK cities
depending on which list you use. Cardiff is just a little larger than
Belfast, the capital of and largest city in Northern Ireland, which
has a population of around 250,000 or maybe more than double
that many if you consider the Belfast Metropolitan Area. Since
there are no official registration offices in Britain − just as there
are none in the US − the exact numbers may vary, depending on
who’s counting when. Maybe we’ll know more when the next
official census count takes place in 2011. And although calculating the exact size of Britain’s biggest cities individually can prove
to be surprisingly difficult, it is somewhat easier to determine
where most people live when looking at the nation as a whole.
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Contemporary America
The word “contemporary” means “at the same time”; you might
want to argue that “contemporary America” should be restricted
to what’s happening in the US this month or this year or this decade. Since history becomes more difficult to make sense of the
closer history is to us − like someone who’s farsighted can only
see things clearly that are further away − let’s begin contemporary America a bit further in the past, with the something very
new for America.
How was the New Deal really new?
New Deal
Remember Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt’s Square Deal, government programs designed to restrict the power of industry? Another Roosevelt, Teddy’s cousin, this one named Franklin Delano
or just FDR for short, faced with the massive problems of the
Great Depression, developed another Deal, this one called the
New Deal, to deal with the fact that millions of Americans faced
economic hardship of a kind not known before in the Land of Opportunity ( 3). A newer New Deal is often mentioned nowadays
as a possible response from the Obama administration to the new
economic crisis seventy-five years after FDR began his revolutionary programs of government intervention in the economy. With
the economic crisis FDR served longer than any other president −
being elected four times with his administrations stretching from
the Great Depression almost to the end of World War II ( 6). The
22nd Amendment to the Constitution would later prohibit presidents from serving more than two terms, so unless the Constitution is changed yet again, President Obama won’t have as long as
FDR did to lead the country out of another economic crisis.
Distinguish General MacArthur from Senator McCarthy
Their names may sound familiar, and they both had their greatest defeat in the same decade of American history; but one could
be looked at as an American hero and one could be demonized
as an American horror. General Douglas MacArthur was a hero
in World War II but was relieved of command in the Korean War.
Senator Joseph McCarthy became famous for his accusations of
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The When (history)
communist infiltration in the government and within a few
years was responsible for ruining the political and artistic careers
of many people ( 6).
Choose a few influential events between 1954 and 1969
It’s a shame that important events don’t always fall nicely into
decades. One important social trend was − as so often in American history − started by yet another Supreme Court decision.
Remember the last decision mentioned at the end of the 19th century, separate but equal? It had become more and more obvious
that the “equal” part of the doctrine was only on paper. A father
from Topeka, Kansas, named Oliver Brown objected to his daughter having to walk a long distance to reach a school for blacks
when a school for whites was much closer. He contributed to one
of the most famous Supreme Court decisions, one that ended the
official segregation in schools ( 7).
Everyone has of course heard of Martin Luther King and his
rhetorically brilliant “I Have a Dream” speech given during the
famous March on Washington in 1963. Two and a half years before MLK’s stirring speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial,
another young man, who would also become known by three
initials, JFK, had spoken on the steps of the Capitol immediately
after taking the oath of office to become the youngest president
of the US: “Finally, whether you are citizens of America or citizens of the world, ask of us the same high standards of strength
and sacrifice which we ask of you.”
The very first test of strength and sacrifice happened less than
two years after JFK’s inaugural address. As you probably know,
the Cold War was the roughly forty years of tension between the
Soviet Union and its allies around the world and the United States
and Western Europe, a cold war that ended with the Fall of the
Berlin Wall in 1989. Perhaps the most dangerous near confrontation didn’t take place in Europe or in Asia but on and around
Cuba, barely 100 kilometers from the tip of Florida ( 6). The
threat of nuclear war between the US and the USSR marked the
beginning of the 60s; the slogan “make love not war” had become
the slogan heard by the end of the decade. In August 1969 hundreds of thousands of young people came to a farm about fifty
kilometers from the small town of Woodstock, New York, to en-
Brown v. Board of
Education
JFK and MLK
from the Cuban Crisis
to Woodstock
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joy the music of some of the greatest musicians of the 1960s; the
celebration became world famous and a symbol of the 60s ( 11).
Perhaps you’re surprised about my choice of inf luential events
and expected some events taken from the most devastating experience in modern American history. The Vietnam War deserves
its own question.
What were the effects of US involvement in the Vietnam War on
American society?
power of the media,
American loss(es)
In one word: traumatic were the effects of the war on American
culture. Photos of the public execution of a North Vietnamese
soldier and of naked children running away from an American
attack were iconic images that began to turn public opinion
against the war. Americans were shocked by the details of the My
Lai Massacre, during which American soldiers killed hundreds of
civilians in the village of My Lai. Student protests increased, and
in 1970 students were killed during a demonstration at Kent State
University. Americans across the nation began hearing the thick
German accent of Henry Kissinger, President Nixon’s National
Security Advisor and later Secretary of State, who represented
the Americans in the Paris Peace Talks. Although Nixon won a
landslide reelection in 1972, as details about what would become
the Watergate Scandal were becoming known, resistance to further funding of the war in Congress increased. The last US troops
left Vietnam in March 1973, and in less than two years, the North
Vietnamese had attained their goal of uniting the country. The
video clips of US Marines being evacuated in helicopters from the
rooftop of the American embassy in Saigon, the former capital
of South Vietnam, while leaving behind those who had worked
for the Americans, provided a final image of humiliation. The
cost in lives and in money was enormous, Americans and their
military officials learned that the power of the media to turn the
tide of public opinion was paramount, American veterans were
not welcomed home as returning heroes as in previous wars. The
healing process between supporters and opponents of the war
took years. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial with its black polished stone wall with the names of those Americans killed or
missing was conceived as a wound in the process of healing. In
spite of the controversies surrounding the original conception
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The When (history)
of the Memorial, which is starkly unlike any other memorial in
Washington DC, millions visit the Memorial each year.
Mention the most important political scandal since the 1970s
Another place in Washington DC provided the name of this scandal. Probably some of you might associate “scandal” automatically with former President Clinton. But Monicagate or Zippergate wasn’t nearly as important as a scandal a couple of decades
before, which was just mentioned a few lines above and is the
topic of our next question.
What effects did Watergate have on American political life?
In two words: traumatic, reassuring. The Watergate is an apartment and office building complex in Washington, in which the
Democratic Party had its campaign offices in preparation for the
1972 presidential election. A few months prior to Nixon’s landslide
win, several men were caught trying to break into the Democratic
Party offices. Due to the tenacity of Washington Post investigative
journalists, Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, slowly but surely
it became evident that President Nixon had known about and
approved of the attempted cover-up of the Watergate break-in.
Almost two years after his reelection, Nixon became the first
president to resign in order to avoid impeachment and removal
from office. The discovery that corruption had extended into the
highest levels of power didn’t result in a bloody revolution but in
an orderly transfer of power. One of the effects of the Watergate
Scandal was to make more information available to the public.
Americans’ trust in their government was certainly shaken greatly
by Watergate, but with the help of a free press and the possibility
for political change there wasn’t the revolution that such a scandal could’ve caused. Post Watergate scandals have been marked
by the -gate suffix, scandals that range from politically American
(Irangate, Monicagate) to politically British (Camillagate) to merely embarrassing: unintentional nudity on television (Nipplegate).
What do you associate with America in the new millennium?
The “new millennium” you might ask? What about the time between Watergate and the year 2000? What about Ronald Reagan
Watergate, first of the
-gates
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and the end of the Cold War? What about Bill Clinton? And of
course what about the defining moment that ended the old millennium, the event given the same name as the number that
Americans call in case of an emergency: 911? These are some of
the topics that we’ll be looking at in other parts of the book.
We end American history with one of those wonderful questions which can have no wrong answer since each person has
their own associations with America today in a millennium that
is no longer as new as it was. The rest of this book − at least the
parts of it that deal with the United States − will present what is
generally thought to be important for German students to know
about America. We’ll be referring again and again to some of
the facts and insights possible from a geographical and historical point of view. But first we need a transition from the United
States in the new millennium to the United Kingdom. And the
Queen herself provided one in 2007 when she made international news by visiting a place we also visited at the beginning of
our survey of American history: Jamestown, Virginia. The Queen
helped mark the quadricentennial (a fancy word for 400th year)
anniversary of the first permanent English settlement in North
America. Of course we need to go much further back in English
history for our look at history of the island kingdom.
Contemporary Britain
What were the principles of the welfare state?
from the cradle to the
grave
While the horrors of World War II were still raging, a British
politician named Rab Butler was responsible for a radical change
in policy towards education with the government promising its
people free secondary education and more kinds of further and
higher education. We’ll see in just a couple of chapters just how
well the government kept its promise.
For the time after the horrors of World War II, a British economist and social reformer named William Beveridge proposed a
radical change in policy towards government’s role in helping
the unemployed, the sick, and the retired. In effect more than
any other person Beveridge brought the welfare state to Britain.
Although Churchill warned the British not to expect too much
from their government after the end of the war, he called himself
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a supporter of a “national compulsory insurance for all classes,
for all purposes from the cradle to the grave” ( 3). Partly because
the Labour Party was even more forceful than Churchill in promising social reform including implementation of the Beveridge
Report, Labour won the election, and Churchill, the Conservative prime minister who won the war, was defeated by Clement
Atlee, the first Labour Prime Minister to also have a majority in
the House of Commons.
Begin with the disintegration of the British Empire and end
with the concept of devolution.
You could claim the very first event leading to the disintegration of the British Empire was also the first step to creating the
title of our book: the Anglo-American War (from the British point
of view) or the War of Independence (from the American perspective). But we’re now in the section “Contemporary Britain,” so
we’ll have to fast forward to the countries that declared themselves independent of Britain after World War II, thus shrinking
the British Empire very quickly. India and Pakistan were the first
a couple of years after the end of World War II, followed by other
colonies in Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean. The handover of Hong
Kong to China in 1997 was regarded as the end of the Empire. Yet
there are still some scattered territories, some of which have even
provoked wars. But we’ll be looking at those as well as at the present status of the Commonwealth, in some ways the successor to
the British Empire, in a later appropriately named chapter ( 6).
“Devolution” rhymes with “revolution” (at least in American
English) and the effects of devolution could very well bring about
the first true revolution in the United Kingdom since the Glorious Revolution more than three centuries ago. But is “Untied”
Kingdom merely a typographical mistake? Not if the countries
of the United Kingdom loosen and then lose their ties to one
another. And this is just exactly what could happen. We’ll be
looking at other aspects of devolution a little later ( 5).
What do you associate with Britain in the new millennium?
Our very last question about British history (and the very last one
here about Anglo-American geography and history) sounds suspiciously similar to one we had before about American history
and is already a bit dated. The millennium isn’t as new as it was a
disintegration and
devolution
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Fig. 2.15
Underneath the
Millennium Bridge
Foto: Anero
few years ago. One famous new
monument to the millennium,
the Millennium Dome near
Greenwich in London, designed
by the famous architect Richard
Rogers, failed to attract visitors
to its museum cum exhibition
area cum theme park and was
renamed the O2 Dome and now
houses an indoor arena. Some
point to the Millennium Dome
as a symbol of a failed Labour
Party’s achievement. The more
successful Wales Millennium
Centre in Cardiff was finished
a little late (2004 to 2009) ( 5). Other less controversial and still
enduring testimonies to the millennium in Britain are the Millennium Bridge in London (one of several bridges with the same
name throughout the country). And what is now known as the
London Eye was originally called the Millennium Wheel and is
still the tallest ferris wheel in Europe. Remember the confusion
about what exactly is a “city” in Britain and the competition to
gain this status ( 1)? Three places gained this highly desirable status in 2000 and thus became known as Millennium Cities. Nicely
enough they span the country geographically from Brighton and
Hove (one city) on the south coast to Wolverhampton in the West
Midlands all the way up to the Scottish Highland city of Inverness.
The UK Millennium Commission was begun in the 90s to fund
buildings, projects, and celebrations not only in England but in
Scotland and Wales too. Wales has its Millennium Stadium in
addition to its Millennium Centre in Cardiff. Perhaps the central
question for the UK in the 21st century in the context of devolution
( 5) will be how much longer Britain’s official name as the United
Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland will remain valid.
After looking at Britain and America from a spatial and a temporal angle, we now need to examine those issues of American
and British life that can seem strange to foreigners, sometimes
especially to Germans, and this time we’ll deal with these issues
not spatially or temporally but rather alphabetically (from A for
Abortion to W for Welfare State).
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The ABCs of British and American Life
(special issues)
3
While we can’t cover the whole alphabet in just one chapter, we
can look at a few issues in American and British society that can
puzzle those looking at the US and the UK from the outside. And
the British and the Americans themselves don’t always agree on
the role and responsibility of the government and the freedoms
of the individual. The following topics aren’t at all as “easy as
ABC” to understand, but knowing about them is crucial for anyone interested in “reading” American and British society well.
Abortion
To understand American attitudes towards abortion we need to
begin with a famous decision that has since been a battle cry for
the two groups on either side of the issue. In 1973 the Supreme
Court ruled in the Roe v. Wade case that states must allow women to have an abortion within the first six months of pregnancy.
While most states had allowed pregnancies to be terminated if the
mother’s life was at risk, some states had laws prohibiting abortion in all other cases. The Supreme Court decision was based on
the belief that the state had an obligation to ensure that women
had access to abortions performed safely since illegal abortions
were often dangerous. The Court also ruled that women had a
right to privacy, that government had no power to intrude into
the home without good reason. But this right to privacy wasn’t
absolute − people couldn’t do with their bodies whatever they
wanted − and the fetus also had rights to be protected. Thus state
laws that prohibited abortion in the later stages of pregnancy
were constitutional.
In later court cases, other justices have modified the results
of the Roe v. Wade decision. But the issue of abortion is still one
of the most divisive in America. Americans have very different
answers to the questions if American women have the right to
abortion, the degree to which the government should regulate
abortion, from which point in time the fetus should be considered as a person deserving the protection of the law: conception,
the third trimester of pregnancy, or birth. In general Republicans
Roe v. Wade
very different opinions
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funding, parental
consent, different state
laws
legal in Britain
Specific Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies
and Catholics have supported the movement that has come to be
called pro-life; Democrats and some liberal Protestant churches
support the pro-choice movement. A large minority of Americans hold the two extremist viewpoints roughly equally − the
state should prohibit all abortions for whatever reason or the
state has no right whatsoever to regulate abortion. A majority
of Americans believe that the state should have some regulatory
power but differ as to the details of these regulations. Evidence
of the passionate feelings of those who are against abortions includes demonstrations in front of abortion clinics and even in
extreme cases shootings of doctors who performed abortions.
President Obama’s intention is to reduce the number of abortions while at the same time trying to find areas of common
ground for all involved. One of his first decisions in the early
days of his presidency was to reinstate government funding of
international organizations that provide abortion counseling,
a move which angered some pro-life groups. Obama will have
the chance to nominate justices to the Supreme Court who
could decide if the Roe v. Wade decision will be modified in the
future.
The very difficult question isn’t only to decide how much
power the state should have in regulating abortion but also includes controversial matters about whether government funding
should be used for abortion and to what degree parents must
give their consent for their daughters to have an abortion. Since
regulation of abortion is a matter left to the states and not to
the federal government, there is a variety of abortion laws across
the US. Currently for example in Oregon teenagers don’t need
to obtain parental permission before having an abortion; Mississippi requires both parents to give consent. Louisiana requires
personal counseling and a 24-hour waiting period; Oklahoma requires that women be informed about possible pain to the fetus
before abortion.
Abortion isn’t nearly as controversial in Britain where the
majority of the British feel that abortion should remain legal
although there is some evidence that the movement to restrict
abortions is growing. The Abortion Act of 1967 made abortion within the first 24 weeks of pregnancy legal and available
through the NHS ( 3) in England, Scotland, and Wales. Abortion
has remained illegal in Northern Ireland.
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The ABCs of British and American Life
Capital Punishment
The United States is the only Western industrialized country in
the world to still apply capital punishment, also known as the
death penalty. While the trend worldwide in the last half century has been the abolition of capital punishment as the ultimate way of punishing convicted criminals, the United States
is still among the top five nations of the world (in addition to
China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan) based on numbers of actual
executions. As with abortion, the laws about capital punishment
vary from state to state although the federal government can also
impose the death penalty as a punishment for some crimes like
treason. In about three quarters of all states capital punishment
is legal although in reality the vast majority of executions have
taken place in only five states: Texas, Virginia, Oklahoma, Missouri, and Florida.
As with abortion, to understand American attitudes towards
capital punishment we’ll need to start with a Supreme Court
decision made in the early 70s (the same time as the decision
legalizing abortion). In Furman v. Georgia a narrow majority of
justices ruled that the state laws in Georgia violated the 8th and
14th Amendments to the Constitution, which prohibit cruel and
unusual punishment and prohibit the government from depriving citizens of life, liberty, or property without “due process of
law.” After some states revised their laws to take into account
this decision, the Supreme Court ruled just a few years later in
Gregg v. Georgia that capital punishment as applied under these
new laws wasn’t unconstitutional. The first execution after this
decision took place in Utah in 1977: Gary Gilmore was executed
by firing squad, the most unusual method of execution and since
abolished. Lethal injection has been used in the overwhelming
majority of executions in the last ten years. In more recent cases
the Supreme Court has further restricted capital punishment
using the principle of the “evolving standards of decency” and
declaring the execution of minors and the mentally retarded to
be unconstitutional. Although there is evidence that race plays a
role in convictions and executions, the Supreme Court has mostly ruled in favor of execution if racial discrimination can’t be
proved while acknowledging that the way capital punishment
is applied could indicate this kind of discrimination. The Court
Supreme Court
decisions
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Specific Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies
recently upheld laws permitting the use of lethal injections as
long as the injections didn’t inf lict unnecessary pain − “cruel
and unusual punishment” is, as we saw above, prohibited by the
8th Amendment.
Capital punishment is still supported by a majority of Americans although the results of opinion polls depend on how the
questions are asked. Because all people convicted have the right
to appeal and because the appeals process starts at the state level
and then can proceed through all the higher courts and even
up to the Supreme Court, there is often a long waiting period
between conviction and execution. While some laws have been
passed to speed up the process between conviction and execution, widespread use of DNA evidence has also helped to reverse
convictions of people on death row and has led to an official
moratorium on the use of capital punishment in Illinois as well
as increased hesitation to perform executions in other states. New
Jersey became the first state in many years to formally abolish
the death penalty in 2007. The number of death sentences and
the number of executions nationwide has decreased since the
turn of the millennium. The support for capital punishment has
remained high among Americans as a whole − very few major
presidential candidates have ever openly opposed the death penalty. More than 150 executions took place in Texas when George
W. Bush was governor; as president he also clearly supported
capital punishment. Barack Obama once admitted that his views
on capital punishment were very complicated. He has criticized
the way in which the death penalty was administered but has
also justified its use for certain crimes that society considered
outrageous. Other explanations for American support of capital
punishment can include general arguments for capital punishment: deterrence to other possible criminals, sense of justice for
the victims’ families, and prevention of further harm to others.
Other reasons could include an American frontier mentality with
general beliefs in clear-cut guilt or innocence, perhaps an American tendency to want quick solutions to complex problems. Since
the use of capital punishment falls under the jurisdiction of each
individual state, only the Supreme Court could ban its practice
in all states on constitutional grounds, an unlikely event in the
near future. Capital punishment will thus most probably remain
one of those issues that divide the US from Europe.
The ABCs of British and American Life
Although capital punishment wasn’t finally and completely
abolished in the UK until 1998, the last executions took place in
the mid-60s. While some polling seems to indicate support for
reinstating capital punishment in Britain, a return to the death
penalty would be impossible as long as the UK remains part of
the EU and continues to support the European Convention on
Human Rights, both of which are adamantly against capital punishment.
Z17
little support in the UK
Class System
Maybe when you hear the word “class,” you might immediately
think of school, but you’ll have to wait until the next chapter for
this meaning of the word. If you think of the upper or working
class, maybe a posh English accent, maybe titles like sir or baroness or maybe earl, then you’re on the right track for this topic:
social class.
Let’s start at the top with the top of the upper class, namely
with those aristocrats who have titles like duke, earl, or baron.
This old upper class, the aristocracy, derives its power and inf luence from as early as the Norman Conquest ( 2). Both the
power and the number of aristocrats with titles were increased
especially during the 17th century under the Stuart monarchs
( 2). You can divide the peerages historically into the names of
the countries: England, Scotland, Ireland, Great Britain, which
all finally became the United Kingdom. Examples of English
peerage include the Duke of Cornwall − the eldest son on the
monarch, currently Charles − and the Earl of Sandwich, whom
we’ll be hearing about in an entirely different context later. Another important aristocrat is the Duke of Edinburgh, also known
as Prince Philip, the Queen’s husband.
You’ll be hearing about two other people with titles and very
exotic names later: Baron Ahmed and Lord Alli ( 8). These people are different in other ways too. While hereditary peers inherit
their titles from their parents and pass them on to their children,
all other peers are life peers only and thus are a bit lower in
the upper class. What almost all peers used to have in common
was the right to sit in the House of Lords − the only unelected
chamber in Europe ( 5). But now big names in industry and
business and law have also become part of the new upper class or
social class in the UK
upper class: aristocrats
life peers, superclass
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middle class and upper
middle class
working class
underclass
class markers
Specific Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies
the “superclass” as it’s sometimes called. These people not only
have money but more importantly the family background and
contacts provided by their public school and later Oxbridge education ( 4).
The upper classes make up only a very small percentage of
Britain’s entire population. The majority of Brits belong to the
middle classes where professions, education, and a degree of
wealth are more important than family background. Characteristics of what’s sometimes called the upper middle class are a university education and a highly qualified job with a good salary:
architects, business executives, or doctors are typical upper middle class professions. Salaried professionals, white-collar workers
like shop assistants and office clerks, and the self-employed are
also considered part of the middle class but don’t have as much
social prestige as members of the upper middle class do.
The traditional working class in Britain is going through dramatic changes. The old image of the typical working-class man as
white and trade union member who lived in government-subsidized housing and whose wife stayed at home is no longer accurate. More working-class members are buying their own homes,
many members of ethnic minorities who began immigrating
to Britain in the 1950s ( 7) are now members of the working
class, the connection to trade unions has been weakened due to
Thatcherism in the 80s ( 6), and the old-fashioned division of labor with the husband doing manual labor and the wife staying at
home is disappearing with women making up a substantial percentage of the workforce. The shift of working-class votes from
Labour to Conservative was also a major factor in the Conservative party’s success from the late 70s through the early 90s.
Another effect of the economic politics during the Thatcher
era was the growth of what is sometimes called the underclass or
the poor and includes elderly people living on limited pensions,
single-parent households, members of ethnic minority groups
with low-paid work, people living off government benefits, the
homeless.
While we’ve been looking at class mainly using the criterion
of family background, education, profession or job, we need to
also glance at other markers of class in Britain like accent, housing, and use of mass media. The upper classes tend to use a kind
of English that used to sound like BBC broadcasters and is still
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The ABCs of British and American Life
the way the Queen speaks. Nowadays, though, the BBC tends to
use regional accents. And what was only a working-class accent
in the past is being adopted by young people with a middle-class
background. Members of the upper classes usually live in larger
estates as you might indeed expect; members of the working
class have become able to buy their own council houses provided
by the government. While the distinction between quality and
popular press used to be an indication of class differences, the
blurring of the sharp distinctions between the kinds of newspapers also ref lects to some degree a blurring of class differences;
although, as you might expect, more of the upper and middle
classes read the Times and the Guardian and more of the working
class the Sun ( 10).
Other areas distinguishing class in Britain involve manners
and taste. There’s evidence of some breaking down of the class
system in Britain − John Prescott, the Labour politician, famously
declared: “We’re all middle class now.” The use of “U” to indicate
the dress, behavior, and speech of the upper classes and “non-U”
to indicate non-upper-class characteristics has humorous overtones. But as long as institutions like the House of Lords and public schools exist and until the ethnic minorities gain full power
and representation, the issue of class will remain a fascinating
part of trying to describe British life. As you can see from our
overview of classes in Britain, family background and history
still play a very important role and help to prevent the sort of
social mobility that’s possible in many other Western countries
like …
You might be surprised to find the United States in this item.
Many Americans also think that their country doesn’t have a
class system and perhaps point to the American dream open to
all immigrants starting with those who were f leeing the restrictions of class a couple of hundred years ago. Or maybe you would
just point to a very simple class system with the rich, a huge
middle class, and the poor? Most researchers think that the US
does indeed have a class system although somewhat different
from that found in the UK. As in the UK, the most common class
characteristics in the US are based on money, job, and education
but also include factors such as race and even obesity. Unlike
in the UK, aristocracy has not played a role in the US although
some famous political families like the Kennedys or the Bushes
we’re all middle class
now (?)
class in the US?
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lower class
Specific Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies
are sometimes regarded as America’s unofficial nobility. It isn’t
aristocracy but another kind of −cracy that is often used to describe America’s social class system: meritocracy, the belief that
individual achievement is important. An expression often used
in German to signify the possibility of economic and professional advancement, the chance that someone who washes dishes
can later become a millionaire, or go “from rags to riches” (the
idiomatic English translation of the German phrase) is part of
the American dream. Prosperity was considered a sign of God’s
blessings within the Puritan work ethic, which has had such an
important effect on American life ( 8).
But the other side of the meritocracy coin is the stark evidence
of those who don’t make it: the working poor or those dependent
on government aid or the homeless. Members of this lower class
can make up as much as 15 to 20 % of the entire American population (depending on which statistics you currently want to trust)
and can be seen in urban ghettos or even on downtown streets.
Race and ethnicity, a defining aspect of American social class
from the very founding of the country, plays a very important
role in these lower classes with a disproportionate number of
African Americans and Hispanics. In recent years with the lack
of nationwide health insurance or job security, members of the
middle classes have experienced social mobility in a downward
direction, making possible a nationwide discussion on the role of
the state in the lives of Americans, a role that in times of prosperity for the majority has been limited ( 3).
Gun Control/Right to Bear Arms
2nd Amendment
One of the most difficult aspects of American life for Germans
to understand lies embedded in the Constitution in a separate
Amendment of the Bill of Rights: “A well regulated Militia, being
necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people
to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” If you find this
sentence difficult to understand with its absolute phrase at the
beginning and ask yourself what a militia has to do with modern
America, then you’re not alone. What exactly the 2nd Amendment is supposed to imply has been a matter of intense debate
for a long time. Many Americans believe that owning a gun is a
right guaranteed in the Constitution and a freedom as sacred as
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The ABCs of British and American Life
the freedom of speech. Many Americans also think that the government has the responsibility for ensuring its citizens’ safety.
It’s perhaps easier to understand the American fascination
or obsession with weapons if we remind ourselves that only a
few generations ago settling a wilderness necessitated the use of
guns − whether to be used against wild animals, robbers, or American Indians. Hunting is also one of the most popular American
pastimes ( 11), and who can imagine American hunters without
rif les and shotguns? In addition to school and campus shootings
( 4), it’s also important to consider that firearms were involved
in the four US presidential assassinations of Lincoln, Garfield,
McKinley, and Kennedy; the attempted assassinations of Jackson,
Truman, Ford, and Reagan; and the assassinations of civil rights
activists Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, of the politician
Robert F. Kennedy, and of the former Beatle John Lennon.
With the increase in urban violence and especially in the wake
of events like the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan or
school shootings, Americans usually begin to discuss whether
gun control is necessary and usually always decide that while
some control would be good, concrete laws restricting gun ownership wouldn’t be good. Americans in favor of the right to bear
arms use slogans like “guns don’t kill people, people do” and
point to the 2nd Amendment. Sometimes it takes years for a bill
restricting gun use to pass through Congress and finally become
law. Bill Brady, who was seriously injured during the assassination attempt on Reagan in 1981, became a supporter of stricter
gun control. The Brady Bill wasn’t passed until thirteen years
after the assassination attempt; it regulates that the legal sale
of handguns can only take place after a check on the interested
buyer. Although gun control advocates and many American cities have attempted to regulate the ownership of firearms, the
Supreme Court ruled in 2008 in a narrow 5-4 decision that the
2nd Amendment clearly gave Americans the right to possess guns
for hunting and for self-defense and wasn’t only limited to members of a militia as some supporters of gun control had argued.
The National Rif le Association (NRA), a large and powerful
non-profit organization founded after the American Civil War,
plays an important role in defending what their three to four
million members see as their constitutional right to bear arms.
The NRA argues that owning a weapon not only is part of Ameri-
hunting animals, shooting famous people
hesitant reactions
NRA
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gun control UK
Specific Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies
can tradition but also that law-abiding citizens need weapons for
personal safety. In addition to political activity, the NRA sponsors
courses and events designed to educate people in the correct use
of firearms.
Ownership of almost all kinds of handguns has been prohibited in Britain since Parliament passed one of the strictest gun
control laws in the wake of the Dunblane school shooting massacre in 1996. While the National Rif le Association in the UK is
older than its cousin in the US, it is much smaller and has little
political inf luence. With public support of gun control high, not
having the right to bear arms is not a matter of public discussion
in the UK. Most of the headlines about violent crime in Britain,
especially in London, in the last few years have dealt with young
people stabbing other young people to death and have prompted
some discussion about government action to prohibit teenagers
from carrying knives.
Welfare State US
welfare state US?
Many Americans wouldn’t call their own country a “welfare
state” because of some of the negative connotations the term
“welfare” has in American English. America’s pioneer culture
with the emphasis on individual achievement and on privately
organized charities and church support has always been suspicious of government organized programs. It was only when the
middle classes began to be affected by risks like unemployment
and poverty caused by long term illnesses − risks that other Western countries protect their citizens from through welfare programs − that Americans began to see an increased role of the
government as helpful and at times even necessary. And Americans tend to want to get rid of welfare programs that don’t work
as effectively as Americans think they should. They also don’t
like programs that might be seen as encouraging too much reliance on government. Although the Republican party usually
propagates as little government funding as possible for social
programs and the Democratic party sees itself more in favor of
government support for those in need, social programs were expanded greatly under the Republican administrations of Nixon
and Reagan and cut under Clinton’s Democratic administration.
Clinton won partly by promising to “end welfare as we know it”
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The ABCs of British and American Life
when the programs begun under Johnson a generation before
became unpopular with large numbers of Americans. Confusing? Not even the Americans themselves are always sure about
exactly what role the government should play in providing social
services, and they’ve been changing their minds yet again since
the economic crisis hit in late 2008.
If we wanted to go back to the roots of the welfare state in
Germany, we’d have to go back more than a century to Bismarck.
But it was only during the Great Depression that the American
attitude towards the role of the government in providing services
like unemployment and retirement benefits changed. Remember Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt’s Square Deal, government programs designed to restrict the power of the captains of industry
in their attempt to amass wealth and inf luence? And the New
Deal that another Roosevelt, this one named Franklin Delano,
introduced ( 2)? FDR set up government agencies, many of them
acronyms with three letters, which became known as the alphabet agencies − perhaps appropriate for a president whose name
was also made up of three letters. A few of the agencies have survived until today like the FCA (Farm Credit Administration), the
FCC (Federal Communications Commission), and the TVA (Tennessee Valley Authority).
Most relevant for our topic is the Social Security Administration
(SSA), which ever since the New Deal has provided government
funding for Americans who retire after working many years and
also includes unemployment benefits, now collectively known
as Social Security. The debate about the future of Social Security,
especially about the future of payments to retired people, has intensified. As in most other industrialized countries but because of
the numbers of younger immigrants not to the same degree, the
US is faced with an ageing population that’s living longer than
any generation in the past. Predictions are that the money collected for Social Security through taxes on income (similar to the
system in Germany) will not meet the needs of those who retire or
qualify for benefits. Some politicians are calling for partial privatization of the system in spite of the huge financial problems an
unregulated financial system has caused in the US. Other possible
reforms include raising the age when people can begin getting retirement benefits to 70 or having richer people pay more into the
system.
a bit of history
Z24
Specific Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies
health care for a Great
Some of the benefits of the New Deal of the 30s and 40s were
expanded during President Lyndon B. Johnson’s (who was also
known by his three initials LBJ) administration in the 60s, especially health care. In what came to be known as the Great Society, Johnson introduced unprecedented government programs to
eliminate poverty and racial injustice in a time of economic prosperity. Also important for our topic here, Johnson also expanded
the Social Security program first initiated by FDR in his New Deal
to include government-funded health care with (unfortunately for
foreign students of America) very similar-sounding names: Medicare and Medicaid. Medicare provides federal funds for the health
costs of all Americans over the age of 65. Medicaid provides federal and state funds for the health costs for some Americans with
low incomes under the age of 65. Since Medicaid is administered
by the states individually, eligibility requirements vary from state
to state. Here again we can see the importance and power of the
individual states within the federal system of American government, as we’ve already seen in the issues of abortion, capital punishment, and gun control. Both Medicare and Medicaid are faced
with the same problem that confronts Social Security − rapidly
increased spending because of demographics − in addition to the
fast-growing expense of medical treatment.
For the vast majority of Americans under 65 and earning too
much to qualify for Medicaid, the main source of health insurance is through their employer, which sometimes pays the entire
cost of the insurance and sometimes only a part. Another fundamental difference to both the health care system in Germany and
in the UK is the fact that when the employee quits or changes jobs
or is fired, his or her health insurance is also cancelled. While
there are some federal programs designed to help bridge the gap
when Americans are uninsured, up to 15 % of all Americans
are not insured. As with the issue of the right to possess guns,
critically analyzed in Bowling for Columbine, another of Michael
Moore’s documentary films presents an intensely critical view of
America’s health care system that many Europeans or Germans
might sympathize with. His 2007 film Sicko sharply criticizes the
lack of American health care for all and claims the health care
system in Canada, the UK, and France is much better. But it’s
important to remember that Moore’s criticism is also something
typically American − and typically optimistic: the belief that a
Society
health insurance overall
and for all?
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The ABCs of British and American Life
more perfect union (to use the ungrammatical expression of the
Founding Fathers in the Preamble to the Constitution) − or better
health care, less crime, more just punishment, and an answer
to when life begins − is possible. The underlying question has
always been about the degree to which government should limit
the risk of citizens losing their jobs, getting sick, retiring poor
compared to the degree to which the individual alone should be
responsible for dealing with these risks. In general the Republican party regards health care as a private matter while Democrats are in favor of government supported insurance for everybody. The Democrat Hillary Clinton tried unsuccessfully as First
Lady to persuade Congress to pass legislation to reform health
care and mandate health insurance for all Americans, pointing
to the United States as the only industrialized nation that doesn’t
provide universal health care. (Her husband President Bill Clinton was instrumental in changing the welfare system as we
heard above.) Although Hillary Clinton’s plan failed in the early
90s, she made the issue one of the most important in the presidential campaign of 2008. President Obama now plans to begin
programs to provide health insurance for all Americans for the
first time in American history.
The degree to which government is involved has shifted ever
since the Great Depression and will no doubt remain an intense
matter of debate for all Americans. Bismarck’s social legislation
provided many of the same benefits that half a century later
FDR’s New Deal would contain. It took the catastrophic effects of
the Great Depression to start a revolution in American attitudes
towards self-reliance and the role of the government in the lives
of ordinary citizens. And more than half a century afterwards,
a new president Obama has brought back the spirit of the ‘New
Deal’. Even the term ‘New Deal’, used in Britain in the late 90s to
name government programs intended to increase employment,
has come back into common use especially since Obama’s election to include now not only economic and social programs but
also government policy towards the environment ( 9).
from a New Deal to a
New Deal in the US
Welfare State UK
Those who like history might be able to guess about when government sponsored health care began in the UK ( 2). But we’d have
from the cradle to the
grave in the UK
Z26
National Health Service
(NHS)
Specific Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies
to go back a few centuries earlier if we wanted to have a look at
other ways that the state began to look after its subjects. And if
the word “subjects” makes you think of “monarch” or “queen,”
then you’re exactly right. The first of many Poor Laws was passed
at the end of the reign of Queen Elizabeth I and provided support
for the aged, the sick, and the poor organized at a local level ( 2).
As poverty increased dramatically during the Industrial Revolution, other Poor Laws established workhouses − those who enjoy
reading Dickens will remember how cruel these could be. Attitude
towards poverty changed in the 19th and 20th centuries from being
a sign of laziness or immorality to being a social issue. And during
the dark days of World War II some British leaders were making
plans for a post-World War II society in which government would
be looking after its citizens “from the cradle to the grave.”
The welfare system in Britain today consists of three main
parts: social security, which provides unemployment and retirement benefits; social services, which provide care for the elderly
and disabled; and the National Health Service (NHS), which provides free health care for all residents of the UK.
The National Health Service (NHS) provides health care
throughout the United Kingdom in various ways. The central element is the system of family doctors, called GPs or general practitioners, who − the biggest difference to health care in the US −
are the first point of contact for patients and who refer patients
to other services, like specialist doctors or hospitals. All individuals must first of all choose a GP in their area of residence, and the
GP must be willing to add the new patient to the list, which for
some GPs can be very long indeed. The government pays the GPs
according to the number of people registered with them. All services with the GPs are free of charge. Some charges must be paid
for dental services, for medicine, and for eyeglasses depending
on the age and financial status of the patient. Another unique
aspect of the NHS is funding. Instead of being funded through
insurance fees as in the US, the NHS is almost entirely financed
through general taxes, a small part of which (similar to Germany)
is collected from both employers and employees and then paid
into a National Insurance Fund. Private medical insurance is of
course available but is expensive. The NHS sometimes makes the
news with scandalous headlines about patients dying because
the waiting lists for patients prevented necessary surgery in time
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The ABCs of British and American Life
or about the numbers of German doctors f lying to Britain for lucrative weekend duty. These stories tend to eclipse − some would
say unfairly − the successes of the NHS, which provides equal
treatment to every citizen and visitor to Britain and which prevents the financial ruin that can result from a lack of insurance
as in the US. But waiting for treatment and the condition of some
hospitals and the increasing costs of modern health care has put
a strain on the system.
Fig. 3.1
NHS, London (taken
from Westminster
Bridge). For many
the NHS remains an
old building under
construction and in
need of repairs.
One possible reform of the NHS is for hospitals to “opt out” and
receive the right to raise their own finances, perhaps resulting
in improvement but also with the danger of leading to a two-tier
health system. While no one denies that the NHS is facing daunting challenges, sixty years of the NHS providing the British with
universal health care is an achievement that you can respect
even if you’re not Michael Moore.
Exercises
Review the items analyzed in this chapter in terms of Britain
and America. Which country gets a more detailed treatment?
Not so trivial question: Why?
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Specific Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies
Possible project:
Pick any of the issues we’ve glanced at in this chapter and formulate concrete questions that you’d like people in the US or in
Britain to answer. Contact as many as you can and compare the
answers you get with some of the generalizations given above.
Other topics which would’ve been interesting and relevant, maybe for the second enlarged edition of this book, but for which
there alas was no room in this edition:
the American ideal of beauty, youth violence and knife culture
in Britain, poverty in the US, ghettos, homelessness in the UK
and US, crime and punishment other than capital punishment,
teenage pregnancy, sex education and attitudes towards sexuality, the court system, behavior of British and American tourists
abroad, the importance of privacy in British (and in American)
life, the use of closed-circuit television systems in British public
places, gangs, gated communities, football hooliganism, binge
drinking, typically American or British diseases and ailments,
obesity and declining life expectancy in the US, challenges of the
first ever huge generation of very old people, eldercare, …
We’ve now completed the appetizers in geography and history and have digested some of the things that could cause heartburn or stomachache for people not aware of unusually different
aspects of Britain and America. We’ll be needing these insights
throughout the rest of the book and will be coming back to some
of these details in later chapters. But now we should move on to
the first main course, one of the classics on any menu of American or British Studies: education.
Z29
Paper, Waves, and Bytes (media)
“[…] were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I
should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.”
American President Thomas Jefferson 1787
“[…] to inform, educate, and entertain […]” “[…] to bring the best of
everything to the greatest number of homes.”
the mission of the BBC according to its founder John Reith
Once upon a time learning about and teaching media in the US
and in the UK was very easy. In Britain you had two kinds of
newspapers, tabloids and broadsheets, easy to distinguish because
of their size and their content: tabloids were small (like medicine
tablets) with pictures and big print; broadsheets were broad, had
long serious articles, and were difficult to read on the London
tube. In the US you had three major networks, the Big Three, with
easy-to-remember names: ABC (American Broadcasting Company), CBS (Columbia Broadcasting System), and NBC (National
Broadcasting Company), all of which began as radio networks and
started to televise in the 1940s. Television in the UK was just as
easy; other than the BBC (British Broadcasting Company) there
was only ITV (Independent Television) launched in the 1950s as
competition for the BBC and followed later by BBC Two and Channel 4 and then 5. You could almost say that television in the US
was as easy to understand as the alphabet and in the UK as easy as
counting 1, 2, 3 (ITV rhymes with three), 4, 5.
How times have changed… What started out as a limited
number of kinds of media at the beginning of the last century
(taking radio as the first medium of modern interest) has now
morphed into a staggeringly complex network of traditional media like radio and television and the press combined with the
seemingly boundless internet and Web 2.0 perspectives. We are
racing at breakneck speed through a revolution as dramatic as
Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press 500 years ago.
When you finish the chapter, you should be able to say something about
Ϝ British and American newspapers both past and present
Ϝ newspaper tycoons past and present
10
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Specific Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies
Ϝ
Ϝ
Ϝ
Ϝ
from Courant to current
newspapers …
newspapers for the
masses
government and the press
the future of the newspaper
British and American television both past and present and
the beginnings of the internet.
Let’s start this chapter with the first evidence of modern media
in the form of British and American newspapers. William Caxton brought the printing press to Britain just after Gutenberg
had invented it, and the first English newspapers appeared in
the early 17th century. Two early English and American newspapers had similar name: The New England Courant, founded by
Benjamin Franklin’s ( 2) brother, and the London Daily Courant,
associated with the female printer/publisher, Elizabeth Mallet, in
Fleet Street in central London. The old spelling courant shouldn’t
disguise the meaning of “current”; people have expected the current news from newspapers ever since and sometimes they’ve
also expected critical articles about the government too. Publishing newspapers with these kinds of articles was, however, often
dangerous. Nevertheless the first papers in America tended to
be highly political, especially towards the end of the 18th century as the colonies sought their independence from Britain. The
infamous Stamp Act tax on paper was one of the causes of the
American Revolution ( 2). In Britain newspaper taxes weren’t
abolished until the mid 19th century. Since the tax was put on
each page, early newspapers tended to be broad with few sheets,
a size that was to characterize serious British newspapers for
three centuries. Some of the early big names are still around (although in the current crisis no one knows for how long), like the
English newspapers The Times and the oldest Sunday newspaper
The Observer, first published at the end of the 18th century. The
three most respected American newspapers, the New York Times,
the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal, were all first published in the mid to late 19th century.
The increasing success of newspapers in the 19th century in
both countries can be attributed to technical advances in printing, to the falling price of paper, to the abolition of taxes on
newspapers, and to the rising rates of literacy ( 4) with more
and more people being able to read and becoming interested in
buying newspapers. Newspaper tycoons became very rich and
also very powerful by selling more and more newspapers at very
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Paper, Waves, and Bytes (media)
low prices. The “penny press” was the name for newspapers in
Britain that just cost one British penny (1/120th of a pound sterling before decimalization 12) or just one US penny (1/100th of
a dollar). We’ve already met one important American newspaper
tycoon in a history appetizer, who was also − as so many important newspaper people − a politician: Horace Greeley founded the
New York Tribune, a very inf luential paper of the mid 19th century,
employed foreign correspondents like Karl Marx and Friedrich
Engels, and popularized a famous saying that some of you might
remember ( 2).
Two even more famous names in the history of American newspapers are still widely known today − for somewhat different reasons. William Randolph Hearst didn’t only have his own castle on
the California coast ( 12) and didn’t only become the unwilling
subject of a movie that many critics consider the best movie ever
( 12), he also founded a business that to this day carries his name
and still plays a major role in American media. Hearst first took
over his father’s newspaper, the San Francisco Examiner, at the end
of the 19th century before heading east to New York where a long
period of competition with the other famous American publisher
of the time, Joseph Pulitzer, began. Their competition for readers
led to the development of yellow journalism, characterized by
exaggerated and shocking material, scare headlines, and sometimes faked interviews in addition to many positive innovations
like more illustrations, sports coverage, and crusades against corruption. Pulitzer, born in Hungary, had immigrated to the US as
a teenager and at first joined the Union Army in the Civil War
( 2). His excellent command of German helped him get a job at
the Westliche Post, a German-language newspaper in St. Louis edited by the German-American statesman and reformer Carl Schurz
( 4). In typical rags-to-riches manner ( 3), Pulitzer managed to
earn enough money to later buy the New York World, which he
turned into a financial success by attracting a larger readership,
including the waves of immigrants ( 7) arriving in the US at the
end of the century. The competition between Hearst and Pulitzer
was especially intense during the Spanish-American War ( 2)
when both championed the concept of Manifest Destiny ( 6) to
justify American involvement. A well-known legend is evidence
of Hearst’s political power as the owner of important newspapers: He was said to have sent a telegram to a photographer in
Hearst vs. Pulitzer and
a Prize
Z32
Ochs and “all the news
that’s fit to print”
three Lords: Northcliffe,
Rothermere, Beaverbrook
Specific Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies
Cuba: “You furnish the pictures, and I’ll furnish the war.” The
inf luence that Hearst and Pulitzer had on the development of
the American press isn’t a legend. The Hearst Corporation owns
dozens of newspapers and television stations and hundreds of
magazines around the world. Pulitzer left part of his inheritance
to one of the most prestigious universities, Columbia University,
to found what would become one of the most famous graduate
schools of journalism in the country, which awards the annual
Pulitzer Prize, one of the highest awards any journalist (or writer
or composer) can achieve.
Adolf Ochs, the son of German-Jewish immigrants, bought
the nearly bankrupt New York Times and by using a more serious
kind of journalism vastly different from that of Hearst or Pulitzer
successfully turned the paper around financially. Although he
reduced the price to a penny, he managed to improve the Times’
reputation, and today it is considered one of the best newspapers
in the US. Ochs’ motto “all the news that’s fit to print” is still on
each front page. Hearst, Pulitzer, and Ochs have left an indelible
mark on all American print media; their inf luence was also felt
all the way on the other side of the Atlantic.
While the names in Britain were different, the intention was
the same: increased circulation through popular stories and
cheap prices. Lord Northcliffe was born as Alfred Charles William
Harmsworth in Ireland and revolutionized British newspapers by
providing more headlines, shorter articles, and special columns
for women. He was inf luenced by American trends set by Hearst
and Pulitzer. Northcliffe founded newspapers like the Daily Mail
and the Daily Mirror, which still exist today, as well as buying
the Observer and the Times. He helped the British government
with propaganda in World War I. Lord Rothermere, the younger
brother of Northcliffe, was born as Harold Sydney Harmsworth in
London. After the death of his elder brother, Rothermere became
heir to the family’s newspaper business. Politically Rothermere
was more radical, supporting the British fascist party and sympathizing with Mussolini and Hitler. He died shortly after the
beginning of World War II. Lord Beaverbrook, born as William
Maxwell in Canada, became known as the Baron of Fleet Street
by buying the Daily Express and the Evening Standard among others. He was one of the few to serve in the British cabinet both in
World War I and II.
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Paper, Waves, and Bytes (media)
One big change after the era of the three lords happened in
the 1980s when Rupert Murdoch, whom we’ll be meeting again
later in the chapter, and others moved production facilities from
central London to the Docklands and enabled newspaper publication to take place with far fewer employees than before.
Fig. 10.1
Fleet Street has been
a traditional address
for the British press
for centuries.
Foto: Anero
The newspapers with the highest circulation in Britain are popular papers like the daily Sun and Daily Mail and the Sunday News
of the World. But the once clear distinction between just two types
of newspapers isn’t so clear anymore: the broadsheet “quality” papers with a focus on serious topics like politics, economics, and society as opposed to the mass market tabloid red tops
(named for the color at the top of the front page) with the focus
on celebrities, sex, and sports. Now some former tabloids have
changed into mid-market papers (with black tops) like the Daily
Mail and Daily Express with more news than the traditional tabloid but also including topics like celebrities, crime, and the Royals. And to further complicate matters, traditional broadsheets
like the Times or the Independent are now published in “compact”
form (since the word “tabloid” can have a negative connotation)
and thus are easier to read on the London tube for example. In
addition to tabloids, compacts, and broadsheets, London also
offers newspapers for the very many ethnic groups in the city
( 7).
While the distinction between quality and popular isn’t as easy
to draw in the US as in the UK, there are American daily newspa-
black tops and red tops
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Specific Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies
Fig. 10.2
An example of the
multi-ethnic mix to
be found in London
newspapers.
Foto: Anero
McPaper? USA Today!
First Amendment and
Fourth Estate
pers like the New York Post or weekly newspapers like the National
Enquirer known for their emphasis on sensationalist news.
One important development in America’s newspapers took
place at the beginning of the 1980s when a brand new kind of
newspaper appeared in color that was to radically change the
look of American newspapers. USA Today was branded as McPaper when it first appeared because of its shallow and brief articles, but the first real American national newspaper soon forced
all the others to start using color front page pictures. Not only
did USA Today exploit the new satellite technology allowing one
newspaper to be printed and distributed across the country, it
also used the shrinking cost of color ink to turn out a product
that was much brighter than the gray and black Washington Post
or New York Times. Since then both these newspapers as well as
newspapers across the country have changed to using color photos and graphics.
In spite of different types of newspapers, what both the US
and the UK share is the belief in the crucial importance of the
press. Although Thomas Jefferson, the third president, was often
criticized in American newspapers during his years as an important political figure in 18th and early 19th century US history, he
still believed that free newspapers were essential for a democracy to work − the people must be well informed as his famous
quote at the beginning of this chapter indicates. Jefferson was
thus strongly in favor of the first Amendment to the Constitution ( 5), which stipulates that “Congress shall make no law […]
abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; […].” The press
came to be known as the Fourth Estate in the UK and the US
with a power equal to the other three parts of British/American
government: the monarchy, the House of Lords, and the House
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Paper, Waves, and Bytes (media)
of Commons; or the executive, legislative, and judicial branches
of American government ( 5).
As the Fourth Estate the press has a tradition of being the
watchdog of the government. Even though there’s no government censorship in Britain, the government is notoriously secretive. In order to guarantee national security − or to claim to be
doing so − the government can use Defense Advisory (DA) Notices
and the Official Secrets Act to conceal potentially embarrassing
information. The government warns journalists with a DA notice, or D Notice as it’s still commonly called, about serious consequences if what the government considers to be confidential
information is published. Freedom of Information Acts passed in
the US from the late 1960s onwards at the federal and state level,
often referred to as sunshine laws, grant every person the right
to free access to government records without having to give any
reason for the access. The British Freedom of Information Acts
were passed thirty years later and still don’t provide the same
degree of power to the people that the American laws do.
Investigative journalism has been part of a long tradition in
both America and in Britain including the muckrakers (a name
Theodore Roosevelt ( 2) used to describe those writers who clean
dirt and filth − corruption in business and government − by raking it up) of the late 19th and early 20th century. Of course the
muckrakers’ stories also helped to sell newspapers. You might
remember ( 2) how the work of two Washington Post reporters
investigating the Watergate Scandal in the 1970s ultimately led
to the first presidential resignation ever. In Britain Harold Evans,
editor of the Sunday Times, helped develop investigative journalism from the late 1960s to the early 1980s by encouraging journalists to work in teams and write detailed articles. The Sunday
Times reported on the victims of thalidomide (the sedative called
Contergan in Germany), and Evans helped force the drug companies to provide significant amounts of compensation. His kind
of investigative journalism has helped to challenge the power of
the British government to restrict access to information.
Although, as we’ve seen, there are many similar aspects of the
press in both countries, you can find some important differences.
While British newspapers usually clearly support one political
party − although the strong connection between party and paper
has been weakening in the past few years − American newspa-
DA Notices, Official
Secrets and Freedom of
Information Acts
investigative journalism
differences UK – US
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who needs a newspaper?
Specific Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies
pers aren’t as closely connected to one political party. British papers tend to provide readers with a stronger sense of identity: a
working-class conservative Sun reader, for example, usually identifies with different groups and interests than a Guardian reader,
who would typically be academically educated and more liberal.
But such close ties can change just as the Sun changed from a
paper supporting first the Labour party, then the Conservatives,
and then Tony Blair before Labour won again in the late 1990s.
Another difference: far more local papers are available in the US.
The only truly national paper is USA Today while all popular British papers can be considered national. Also, British newspapers,
especially the popular press, often have headlines that would no
doubt be too outrageous and racist for most of the popular papers in the US and in Germany, for that matter, which happens
to be the target of some of infamous sports headlines like “Let’s
Blitz Fritz” or “Watch out Krauts. England are gonna bomb you
to bits.”
What started out as paper has now changed into multimedia
and the word “newspaper” has become a misnomer. In the wake
of the economic crisis of the late 2000s a dramatic drop in income has resulted in some well-known newspapers both in the
US and the UK reducing their services like the highly respected
American newspaper the Christian Science Monitor (in spite of its
name not a religious paper), which was one of the first newspapers to put text online and in 2009 reduced its daily print editions to once a week while maintaining daily online editions.
Other newspapers have gone completely online like the Seattle
Post-Intelligencer or completely disappeared like the Rocky Mountain News in Denver. One journalism professor has fixed an exact
date for the last daily newspaper in America to disappear: the
first quarter of 2043. But some think that newspapers could still
save themselves by receiving financial backing from non-profit
organizations such as the Scott Trust, founded in the 1930s to
preserve the financial security and independence of the British
newspaper the Guardian. Some say that the biggest newspapers
with the best reputation and those which have in the past served
broader society through investigative journalism will survive
in the market if they embrace new technology. With the move
online, new elements of journalism have come to life, a few of
which we’ll look at a bit more closely later in our book. Not only
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Paper, Waves, and Bytes (media)
are online versions of all newspapers now available but some
newspapers also have digitally archived their older paper editions, like the Guardian and Observer Digital Archive, and thus
put a wealth of information at our fingertips, some for free and
some for a fee.
Regardless of the huge changes in print media, modern media
in general haven’t changed in one aspect since the time of the tycoons Hearst, Pulitzer and the three lords we read about. We can
see monopolistic tendencies on both sides of the ocean, sometimes to be found in the same person, Rupert Murdoch providing
us with the perfect example to take us from Britain to America
and from paper to waves and then all the way finally to bytes.
Murdoch was born in Australia (and still has an audible Australian accent), studied at Oxford ( 4), worked brief ly at one of Lord
Beaverbrook’s tabloid newspapers, and then bought his own British newspapers, the weekly News of the World and the daily Sun.
Murdoch very successfully combined sensational headlines with
stories about sex, crime, and sports, but didn’t limit his acquisitions to the popular press, acquiring later the prestigious Times.
Murdoch’s head-on-head fight with Robert Maxwell could remind you of the competition between Hearst and Pulitzer. Maxwell, who had roots in Eastern Europe, immigrated to Britain
during World War II, served in Parliament, built a media empire
that included the Mirror Group Newspapers in the UK in addition to American publishing, television, and film production
companies. Financial irregularities were discovered after Maxwell’s mysterious death in the early 1990s. Murdoch expanded
into American media just as Maxwell did, buying an American
weekly tabloid, the Star, and a daily, the New York Post. Later he
expanded into television, buying Fox Broadcasting in the US in
order to compete with the American-born media tycoon Ted
Turner, who founded CNN, the Cable News Network, and later
bought other media companies like Warner Brothers Films. Murdoch created Sky Television in Britain before acquiring another
newspaper, one of the highly reputable American newspapers
mentioned earlier, the Wall Street Journal, which he called his
f lagship. Murdoch has also ventured into the digital world and
claimed that digitalizing and globalizing are the two keys to success. He owns MySpace.com, one example of the internet social
networks we’ll be looking at later in the book. Murdoch’s very
Murdoch as AngloAmerican media mogul
Murdoch vs. Maxwell
and vs. Turner
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historically the Big
Three US networks
four-letter local
stations, primetime and
ratings
Specific Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies
conservative political views, his close friendships with those in
power, and the general dangers of putting many different kinds
of media in the hands of one person or corporation remain a
source of major controversy.
With the mention of the Fox Broadcasting Company we’re already in the middle of our next media section and at the end of
a tradition of American television programming. We’re leaving
paper as the medium and proceeding to waves − both sound and
light waves that carry audio and visual data from the producer to
the receiver. And in the 1950s at least both in the US and the UK
the producers and the receivers were clearly defined.
Most Americans during the 50s owned a TV, bringing scenes
of the world into their living rooms with TV series mirroring
a world in which white middle-class families were the rule.
Americans could choose between three television networks, all
of which still exist today, given here in order of their original
founding as radio networks: NBC (National Broadcasting Company), CBS (originally Columbia Broadcasting System), and ABC
(American Broadcasting Company). Each of these networks provided programming to local television stations. The Federal Communications Commission or FCC, one of the alphabet agencies
first founded during FDR’s New Deal ( 3), regulated the use of
the airwaves and helped to organize the rapid growth of television stations. We can understand “network” here in the literal
sense as a connection between the producers of television programs and their broadcasting through affiliate local stations.
Let’s look at three concrete examples of CBS affiliates in three
state capitals mentioned in one of the geography appetizers
( 3). In Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, the local affiliate of CBS is
WHP-TV, originally channel 55; in Austin, Texas, CBS programming is shown on KEYE-TV, originally channel 42; and in Sacramento, California, on KOVR, originally channel 13. We can see
that each local television station has a call sign, usually composed of four letters beginning with W for the eastern part of the
country and with K for those areas west of the Mississippi River.
(Yes, I know it doesn’t make sense.) The letters also can tell us
something about the station: HP for Harrisburg, Pennsylvania;
EYE for the famous eye that CBS uses as a logo, and KOVR for
“covering all of northern California” (with a creative spelling of
“kovr” for “covering”). The channel numbers originally simply
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Paper, Waves, and Bytes (media)
indicated the numbers of the knob of each television set. Now in
the digital age channel numbers aren’t used anymore, but numbers are still important in another sense: the number of people
who watch which programs on which networks at which times,
especially during “primetime,” the evening hours from around
7 to around 11 pm when the most viewers are watching television. Nielsen Ratings is the most famous organization that establishes the number of viewers, which determines how much a
network can charge businesses for commercial time. The number of viewers also indicates the popularity of a show and thus
which shows should be continued or canceled.
In addition to the Big Three, the Public Broadcasting Service
was founded in 1970 as a non-profit American corporation. PBS
isn’t funded by commercials like most American networks but
by a variety of sources: federal, state, and local governments as
well as voluntary contributions by viewers and by corporate donations. Although not many Americans watch PBS as regularly
as they do the other networks, PBS has more member stations
than any other American network. The affiliate in Harrisburg,
for example, has the call sign WITF. A famous PBS member station is WGBH in Boston, which has collaborated with British production companies and produced famous series like the popular
science series Nova and the cooking show The French Chef (with
Julia Child 11). Other acclaimed PBS series include the longrunning and very inf luential children’s series Sesame Street, the
longest-running weekly primetime American drama series Masterpiece Theatre, which has been broadcasting high quality British and later American drama for almost forty years and which
made the original presenter Alistair Cooke known nationwide,
and American Experience, an award-winning documentary series
about American history.
Rupert Murdoch, as we’ve seen above, founded Fox (written
sometimes as FOX to look like the Big Three networks) in the
1980s. Fox has since become one of the most-watched television
networks with the longest-running situation comedy (sitcom)
and animated series, The Simpsons, the science-fiction drama The
X-Files, and the reality competition show American Idol, based on
the British original Pop Idol (the German version is Deutschland
sucht den Superstar). The Fox News Channel, part of News Corporation, founded and led by Murdoch and one of the largest media
PBS…
…and FOX…
Z40
…and many more
networks…
beloved British imports
Specific Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies
conglomerates in the world, has been criticized for its partiality
and its strong support of a conservative political agenda but has
remained one of the most popular news channels.
With the advent of cable, satellite, and now digital broadcasting, Americans have dozens of television networks and in major
cities hundreds of stations and channels (the three words network, station, and channel are now used interchangeably) catering to every possible wish. Some programs are available for
free, others require fees. For news in addition to Fox and CNN,
C-Spann covers the Senate and House of Representatives ( 5).
For shopping you can choose programs on HSN (Home Shopping
Network) or QVC (Quality Value Convenience), for Spanish-language programming ( 7) networks like Univision and Telemundo, for religious programming ( 8) TBN (Trinity Broadcasting
Network) or CTN (Christian Television Network), for movies try
HBO (Home Box Office) or simply TMC (The Movie Channel), for
sports ESPN (Entertainment and Sports Programming Network)
or TVG (Television Games Network) dedicated to horse racing,
and for weather tune into TWC (The Weather Channel) ( 9)
or the Local AccuWeather Channel. A channel aimed at young
adult males is called Spike and is part of the MTV networks. Music Television or MTV hit the airwaves with music videos in the
early 80s and linked television and popular music in a radically
new way. MTV has had enormous inf luence both on television
and on popular culture. A channel aimed at women is appropriately enough called Lifetime Real Women. We began our look at
American television in the 50s when many people watched the
same programs; nowadays “broadcasting” has become “narrowcasting” with television no longer providing a common cultural
activity but with very many specific activities tailor-made for the
many groups in contemporary American society, including Anglophiles.
American television has always provided programs for those
interested in all things British; the British “invasion” began with
the Beatles and the Stones ( 11) and was followed by other
very successful British exports to America like Britcoms, British
situation comedies shown on American television from Fawlty
Towers in the 1970s to The Office in the late 2000s. Also popular
in America in the past and present are special series made in
Britain and successfully exported like Civilisation or series made
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Paper, Waves, and Bytes (media)
in America by British expatriots like Alistair Cooke’s personal
view of American history, America, a special birthday present for
the American bicentennial in 1976, or Harold Evans’ They Made
America, an award-winning series about American inventors on
PBS and part of the highly acclaimed American Experience history
series. The television network BBC America is available on cable
and via satellite. And speaking of the BBC…
The BBC, short for the British Broadcasting Corporation, was
the only provider of television programming in the UK until the
mid 1950s and has remained one of the institutions that defines
Britain. Auntie Beeb was the BBC’s nickname − both in a positive way to denote a member of the family and with critical connotations to evoke an old, overly critical aunt. The founder of
the BBC, John Reith, didn’t believe its duty was only to inform,
educate, and entertain as quoted at the beginning of this chapter.
He also saw the BBC as a national family with responsibilities
towards all families. For example, in the early years of television,
a scheduling policy called Toddlers’ Truce shut down broadcasting between 6 and 7 p.m. so that parents could put their children
to bed. The BBC has remained a cultural force in Britain in spite
of scandals about reporting, about the degree of government interference, and in spite of criticism that the programs aren’t as
high in quality as they used to be. And the BBC has remained a
successful exporter not only to the US as we’ve just seen but also
to the rest of the world with very expensive and highly acclaimed
documentaries like Planet Earth. Those who pay the German television fee wouldn’t be surprised about the license fee everyone
who owns a television/radio pays in the UK. While the BBC alone
has until now profited from the fee (currently around £150 a
year), it may end up being shared by some of the other British
networks.
After the famous broadcast of the coronation of Elizabeth II in
1953, television grew greatly in popularity. The BBC was joined
by Independent Television (ITV) in the 50s, and BBC Two was
added in the 1960s, followed in the 80s by Channel Four and
in the 90s by Five (used to be called Channel 5). The words of
Raymond Williams, someone we’ll be hearing a lot more about
in Part II of this book, could be heard during the first day of
broadcasting for Channel 4, a fitting example for a channel
that is known for its documentaries and cultural programming.
historically Auntie Beeb
or the BBC
the other public service
channels
Z42
radio excerpts: from
War of the Worlds …
… to Letter from America and The Archers… to
online
Specific Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies
Channel 4 has its Welsh-language counterpart S4C (Sianel Pedwar Cymru means Channel Four Wales in Welsh). All five terrestrial broadcasters (called “terrestrial” because the broadcasting is
done on earth and not via satellites or underground cables) are
available all across Britain to practically anyone who has a television set. Partly because of their wide availability, these networks
(like the BBC or ITV) or channels (like BBC One or BBC Two) are
regulated by the Office of Communications (Ofcom) and are expected to broadcast programs for the public benefit and not just
for commercial reasons. Both award-winning and very popular
is the soap opera Coronation Street, which began on ITV in 1960
and is now shown five times a week. The series originally shared
some similarities with the social realism of British cinema in the
early 60s ( 11).
While the terrestrial networks still exist, the British now have
an increasing number of networks and programs to choose from.
The BBC alone now has more than a dozen channels ranging
from BBC Parliament to CBeebies for children under six years
of age. BBC World News is the world largest news channel, BBC
Prime is available via satellite in Germany. Digital terrestrial television using antennas and special boxes as well as television via
cable and satellite provide programming catering to every possible wish − just like in America.
Of course television isn’t the only medium that broadcasts signals using waves, the voices and music of radio also use sound
waves to reach the ears of Americans and Brits from coast to
coast. If we had organized this section strictly chronologically,
we would’ve had to begin with radio since the Big Three American networks and the BBC first were radio networks. Let’s just
mention a few important radio details that link up with other
chapters of this book. One of the most famous American radio
broadcasts that caused panic among listeners in the late 1930s
was Orson Welles’ ( 11) adaptation of H.G. Wells’ science fiction
novel The War of the Worlds. Much more soothing were Franklin
D. Roosevelt’s Fireside Chats, meant to reassure Americans in the
troubled times of the Great Depression and World War II. Every
president since has used the radio to address the nation regularly.
To help the British understand the Americans, the British
journalist Alistair Cooke, whom we met earlier in the chapter,
began shortly after World War II a weekly radio series entitled
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Paper, Waves, and Bytes (media)
Letter from America over BBC Radio 4 (just like with television the
BBC also has various radio stations). The series continued until
the early 2000s and thus became the longest-running speech radio show in the world. Another famous British journalist whom
we met earlier in this chapter, Harold Evans, continued a version
of Cooke’s famous series for a short run. One other famous radio
program that also started on Radio 4 a few years after Cooke’s radio series began is still running: The Archers is a radio soap opera
about families living in a fictitious village called Ambridge in
rural England and is still one of the most popular series both on
the radio and on the internet. Just as for newspapers, the future
of radio lies in the internet. Radio is now available in online versions of regular radio stations and as internet-only stations. And
where can you see American or British television programs? On
the internet, of course, on any of a variety of sites like YouTube
and BBC Online or on any of the corresponding websites for all
of the television and radio networks mentioned so far though
sometimes in Britain with restrictions on broadcasting to foreign
countries.
We’ve now moved from waves to bytes. Who could’ve dreamed
that mere “bits” − the technical name for the smallest units of information in computers, with the value namely of either 0 or 1 −
could be combined to form “bytes” and that these bytes could be
combined to generate all the information of the virtual universe?
Although “bytes” is in the title of this chapter, I hope you’ll forgive me for asking you to wait until Part II of this book for more
about bytes and the new media since the paper reserved for this
chapter is almost used up, and neither the airwaves of the early
20th nor the bytes of the 21st century can help. But at least I can
offer you a “bite to eat” in the next chapter, if you can stomach
this really awful pun.
Exercises
1. Skim the chapter on religion to find the name of the two-part
play that won two Pulitzer Prizes.
2. Skim through the next chapter to find the name of a film
regarded as one of the best films ever made and then connect
its director with two of the topics of this chapter.
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Specific Topics in Anglo-American Area Studies
3. Mention two important media tycoons of the early and late
20th centuries who both competed with two other more successful tycoons.
4. Mention how television is funded in the US and UK.
5. Name some famous British exports relevant for this chapter
that have inf luenced American culture.
Challenging questions and interesting projects:
Compare the paper versions of three randomly selected American and British newspapers with their online versions. Can you
tell any differences?
Check your local television listing and write down all the programs you think might come from the US or the UK. Try and
come up with explanations about why these shows are popular
in Germany.
And the if-you-can-do-this-maybe-you’ll-win-the-Pulitzer-Prizeor-become-more-famous-than-Wikipedia-or-YouTube task:
Predict what the contents of this chapter could look like in ten
years. Which sections will be interesting only from a historical
point of view? Which content hadn’t been mentioned at all?
And finally, further topics not dealt with in this chapter … for
those who just can’t get enough of old-fashioned media:
censorship, magazines, news agencies, television genres…
Recommendations for Further Reading
A few selected websites:
Ϝ The British Council’s website at <www.britishcouncil.org> has
lots of information and links including for example a series of
books available free to download, one of which (Sardar’s What
is British?) I used in the introduction to Chapter 12.
Ϝ You might be pleasantly surprised by some of the critical
views available in official publications put out by the US Department of State’s International Information Programs with
a list of downloadable and free publications at <http://usinfo.
state.gov/products/pubs/list.htm>.
Ϝ A good alternative to Google is the regularly updated Academic Info site <http://www.academicinfo.net/> with subject
guides on American Studies and British Studies and lots of
helpful annotated links.
Ϝ “How Stuff Works” <howstuffworks.com> is a great website
owned by the American global media and entertainment company Discovery Communications. Interestingly and clearly
written articles by journalists and academics include for example “How the Electoral College Works” or “How Health Insurance Works.”
Ϝ A wonderful award-winning website “Woodlands Web” <www.
woodlands-junior.kent.sch.uk> is designed for and partly written by school children with valuable, charmingly written information about many aspects of British life for non-children
too.
Ϝ And finally one interesting British American distinction:
the Ordnance Survey website <www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk>
maintains copyright on all its British maps; the American National Atlas website <www.nationalatlas.gov> offers maps for
use in the Public Domain, that is, copyright free. Those who
like it simple can find many simple outline maps of the British
Isles online. Those who like it much more detailed can find a
link on the companion website to a wonderful web project,
Geograph British Isles, which has an archive of geographically
based photographs.
Ϝ The National Archives of the UK <www.nationalarchives.gov.
uk.> provides an overwhelming selection of documents online, including the Domesday Book with games for students
and tips for teachers.
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Recommendations for Further Reading
Ϝ Want to find some names of important British Chinese who
have made a contribution to Chinese culture in Britain? The
refereed site <www.visiblechinese.com/> is a good starting
point.
Ϝ The website connected to the Museum of Broadcast Communication <www.museum.tv/>, a museum in Chicago dedicated
to American television and radio, has many helpful resources
including free downloads especially intended for teachers and
excerpts from the huge Encyclopedia of Television with entries ranging from Raymond Williams to Oprah Winfrey (and
that’s just the letter “W”).
Ϝ Further sources, website recommendations, extra material,
color versions of illustrations, many links, an interactive blog,
and other great stuff can all be found on the companion website at <utb-mehr-wissen.de>.