Do you agree with the view that the British media conveyed fundamentally traditional values, and in doing so reinforced social conservatism during the period 1945-1959?
Source 1 states that British media continued to convey traditional values between 1945 and 1959. The country had just come out of a war where traditional values were welcomed with open arms, so implementing the radical change of adjusting the media to the social quota, was not as popular or as well-executed as say, the US. Paul Swann wrote in 1987 that Hollywood had an egalitarian element that British films lacked. Hollywood was seen as revolving around the individual and offered hope to people in a collectivist culture. However, there were some changes, as some populist historians argue that the British had made some adjustments to popular demand in the early post war period, however Robert Chapman in 1992 complained that in order to maintain the same quality of radio, gave more money to programmes with a higher social class of listener, and a lower expenditure to those with a lower class listener. This however did not reflect on the statistics for each programme, as the working class were more likely to listen to the radio than the upper class. Overall, Source 1 says that British media reinforced social conservatism during the period stated above. Source 2 states that although some films were being produced in order to educate the British public to other cultures and living conditions to those which the white middle class were less familiar with, the actual result was far from it. Films such as Pool of London and Flame in the Streets, were created in order to genuinely question the racial/social hierarchies in place in 1950s Britain, but many historians and film critics have arguments to say that these films merely reinforced the idea of social and racial hierarchies, as they displayed, rather