Newspapers and the Law in the Nineteenth Century

This chapter provides an account of the development of laws relating to the press, considers the ways in which the industry promoted and responded to these developments, and reflects on their significance for wider understandings of law in society and the cultural, social and political role of newspaper and periodical publishing.It outlines the traditional view that the press became free from state control and considers the paradox that, at the same time, it became progressively entangled with, legal rights and constraints, emanating from the state, at a time when communications was central to the way people experienced the state and the state interacted with their daily lives. The chapter also discusses the Obscene Publications Act (1876) and the Law of Libel Amendment Act (1888). The first exemplifies issues around state and cultural repression of the press, the other, the way in which the press sought to use the law to gain favours from the state. Both are viewed in their wider historical context, and both provide insights into the cultural and political debates circulating at the time around the issue of the law, the state, personal freedoms and the press.

Context (archaeology) · Newspaper · Political science · Politics · Publishing · Sociology · State (computer science) · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · Freedom of Expression and Defamation · History · Law · Law in Society and Culture