
The global media system took shape in the last half of the 19th century as key players from the telegraph industry – for example John Pender, the world’s most important telegraph and cable mogul and long-reigning head of the Eastern Telegraph Company, from Britain, William Siemens from Germany, C.F. Tietgen and Henrik Erichsen of Denmark, Gordon Bennett and Jay Gould from the US, and a tight-knit coterie of other figures – parlayed their domestic experience into positions at the apex of the global media system. As they did, they also, at least initially, forged strong ties with news agencies and the press. Indeed, the global news agencies and commercial press relied heavily on the telegraphs and cables and were some of the earliest investors in them.