Press Regulation between 1939 and 1945: The Analysis of Protectorate Press Meetings

The article deals with press regulation in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia from 1939 to 1945. It provides a brief introduction to the mechanisms used to influence the content and formal aspects of press communication so that they matched the interests and needs of the occupying power. The main part of the paper presents the results of a quantitative analysis of minutes from press meetings, regularly organized for journalists by the Press Department of the Council of Ministers. At these meetings members of the Press Department and the Cultural and Political Department of the Reich Protector evaluated media performance during the previous period and gave instructions to the representatives of the periodicals about the content and style of their writing. These meetings thus represented one of the most important instruments of control over Protectorate press. Our analysis presents their formal structure and demonstrates, using examples of specific speeches, that the efforts to influence media communication flows were not solely repressive but also clearly manipulative.