Page 102 - An Introduction to Political Communication Fifth Edition

Intro to Politics Communication (5th edn)-p.qxp 9/2/11 10:55 Page 81

THE MEDIA AS POLITICAL ACTORS
This Week, also headed by Andrew Neil and with a similar format). The
comments made are rarely controversial, but they are subjective and are
presented as such to the viewer. The continuing proliferation of TV channels
and journalistic outlets, and the resulting decline in importance of any single
channel, is likely to mean greater efforts by the broadcasters to ‘subvert’ the
conventions of impartiality, and allow TV to approximate more closely the
more overtly authored, opinionated forms of coverage long established in the
press. The expansion of online commentary has reinforced this trend. When
hundreds, perhaps thousands of bloggers are pursuing highly opinionated
agendas on the internet, the studied impartiality of a public service broad-
caster such as the BBC comes under pressure to find space for views as well
as news. The commercial success of Fox News in the United States – a
broadcast news outlet best compared to the Thatcher-era Sun in its right-
wing populism and demagoguery – can be expected to further intensify this
pressure, although the UK government minister for culture, Jeremy Hunt,
stated in July 2010 that his government had no intention of relaxing the
impartiality requirement on BBC news.

THE EXPERTS

We note, finally, the participation in political journalism of non-journalists:
the politicians, of course, but also those who, by virtue of scholastic
achievement or some other legitimating mechanism, are defined as ‘experts’
on a particular political issue. These specialist pundits are ‘qualified’ to speak
on the issues, making sense of them for the layperson. Like the educated
elites of the early public sphere (Habermas, 1989) they are called upon to
share with us, the people, their wisdom and learning. Their views are taken
seriously precisely because they have been defined as expert. I have written
elsewhere about patterns of access to television news on the subject of
East–West relations (McNair, 1988), noting there that these experts – or
‘primary definers’, as Stuart Hall has called them (Hall et al., 1978) – are not
necessarily especially knowledgeable. The point from the journalists’ per-
spective, is that they are seen to be expert, and can thus help to confirm the
authority and credibility of the news or current affairs programmes to which
they contribute.
Expert pundits are used with particular frequency in coverage of eco-
nomic policy (usually recruited from City finance and banking houses),
obscure or faraway places, and military policy, where retired generals and
admirals are regular contributors.
Retired politicians, for the same reasons as academics and other experts, are
employed as pundits to give an insider’s view on current issues. Nimmo and
Combs write of the ‘pundit-sage’ (1992, p. 67), referring to those elder states-
men (and occasionally women) who pontificate with the authority of village

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