»Hedwig Richter's book fills a gap in comparative inquiries into nineteenth-century elections and is a milestone in the historical study of suffrage and voting practices.«
Thomas Kühne, Professor of History, Clark University

»...tremendously rich in detail and at the same time entertaining ... In describing these election practices, Richter reads many established narratives against the grain.«
Florian Meinel, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

Historian Ute Daniel examines the shifting, often unpredictable relations between politicians and political journalists from World War I to the 1980s through the lens of key episodes in the history of Germany and the United Kingdom. Double chapters probe and contrast the role of the media during World War I, conflicts between conservative political leaders and press moguls in the interwar era, the Profumo and Spiegel scandals of the 1960s, and policies on public and commercial television in the two countries.

Daniel reveals how media-politics interactions in Germany and the UK were marked by a “confidentiality cartel” — strategic, exclusive collaboration to benefit both sides, despite all friend-foe perceptions. In the UK, male leaders from politics and the media (women were almost completely absent in both spheres for most of the period) maintained close professional and personal contacts even before 1900. Such networks were unthinkable in Germany, where journalists’ status was long viewed as too low to allow access to the upper echelons of politics.