This book explains how the media helped to invent the European Union as the supranational polity that we know today. Against normative EU scholarship, it tells the story of the rise of the Euro-journalists pro-European advocacy journalists within the post-war Western European media. The Euro-journalists pioneered a journalism which symbolically magnified the technocratic European Community as the embodiment of Europe. Normative research on the media and European integration has focused on how the media might help to construct a democratic and legitimate European Union. In contrast, this book aims to deconstruct how journalists as part of Western European elites played a key role in elite European identity building campaigns.

Analyses the rise of Euro-journalists and their impact on the representation of European integration Deconstructs pro-European advocacy journalism from the 1950s to the 1970s Argues that European elites keen on European identity-building have overestimated the power of the media

Autorentext
Martin Herzer holds a PhD in History from the European University Institute, Italy. He was a visiting doctoral student in the Department of International History at the London School of Economics and a teaching fellow at the Centre d'Histoire at Sciences Po Paris.

Inhalt

Introduction.- The Media and the Many Europes.- The Emergence of the Euro-journalists.- The Rise of the Euro-narrative.- The Dominance of Euro-journalism.- Euro-journalism and the Emergence of a European Polity.- Conclusion: The Media, Politics and European Identity Building.