The Holocaust and the British regional press 1939-1945

The study examines the ways in which news of the systematic deportation and murder of European Jewry by Nazi Germany was presented and interpreted in a sample of the regional press in Britain.;The main inquiry examines the content of the Manchester Guardian, the Yorkshire Post and Glasgow Herald from January 1942 until June 1943. It does not cover the pre-war period but includes a prologue (1939-41) and epilogue (1943--45) to provide an indication of the kind of coverage available to the regional press at the time.;It also presents a quantitative overview of the range of coverage about Jews/Jewish issues in each of the sample newspapers in order to identify and illustrate the nature and extent of news concerning Jews in Britain, Palestine and Nazi-occupied Europe during the main sample period. An additional content analysis of one newspaper, the Manchester Guardian, is used to assess the 1939--41 and 1943--45 periods and thus provides an overview of the relevant coverage during the entire war period.;The study pays particular attention to the sources of news concerning ghettoisation, executions, deportation, and the systematic mass murder of Jews in Nazi-occupied Europe. It also concentrates on the views and comments of the newspapers in leader columns and readers' letters. An integral part of the discussion is the newspapers' assessment of the official and public reaction to the news of the Nazi extermination programme.;It is found that each of the newspapers were fully aware of the Nazis' intention to murder all Jews under their control by December 1942. They all reported the events that came to be understood as the Holocaust, (some in extraordinary detail) but the Manchester Guardian stood apart because of the consistency of its coverage.