Page 101 - An Introduction to Political Communication Fifth Edition

Intro to Politics Communication (5th edn)-p.qxp 9/2/11 10:55 Page 80

POLITICS IN THE AGE OF MEDIATION
to be observed in broadcasting studies. Such status is acquired, like that of
the press columnist, by the interviewer’s history of access to the inside track
of politics, and the audience’s knowledge that he (they are, as yet, mainly
men) move in the same circles as those being interviewed. Indeed, both Robin
Day and Brian Walden had backgrounds in professional politics.
The phenomenon of the ‘star’ interviewer and the increasingly combative,
adversarial style of broadcast political interview in recent years has been a
cause of considerable tension between the politicians and the broadcasters,
especially the BBC. First the Tories, and then Labour in office, attacked the
BBC’s most aggressive (some would say most effective) interviewers, like John
Humphrys, Jeremy Paxman and Kirsty Wark, on the grounds that they were
usurping the right of the elected politician to present his or her arguments on
air. BBC managers have been regularly leaned on by both Labour and
Conservative media ‘minders’ anxious to protect their clients and to create a
less adversarial interviewing environment. The interviewers have responded by
saying that they are merely doing what their fourth-estate role requires of
them – standing up for the public and representing its interests against a
political class whose members now come to the broadcast studio armed to the
teeth with sophisticated public relations and news-management techniques,
designed to maximise the free flow of nice-sounding but politically empty
rhetoric. The adversarial interview, say its advocates, is a necessary tool to cut
through this rhetorical gloss and expose the hard core of policy beneath.
In a notorious case of this technique in action, BBC Newsnight presenter
Jeremy Paxman once asked a Conservative minister exactly the same question
fourteen consecutive times and still failed to get the straight answer he wanted,
thereby communicating a powerful message about the politician’s prog-
nostication and evasiveness. At other times interviewers have crossed the line
from legitimate questioning into the realm of rudeness and self-importance,
elevating the demonstration of their own inquisitorial cleverness over the
carrying out of the journalistic tasks at hand. On balance, however, and in the
face of intensively deployed public relations techniques (explored in Chapter
7), the adversarial interview is best viewed as an important, if sometimes flawed
means of broadcast analysis and interpretation of political rhetoric.
In all the above formats, the political journalist is balancing the role of
advocacy with the requirements of impartiality set down by law and con-
vention. There is now a type of programme, however, in which the pundits
can ‘come out’, as it were, and say what they think – the political talk-show.
The best examples of such a show on British television have been Channel
4’s A Week In Politics, which contained most of the elements listed above –
reportage, interviews, etc. – but also featured the relatively new (for British
broadcasting) device of bringing together two pundits – Andrew Rawnsley
and the late Vincent Hanna – to chat in informal, relaxed tones about the
events of the week; and the BBC’s Midnight Hour, frequently presented by
the opinionated Andrew Neil (this programme was replaced in 2003 by

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