Page 136 - An Introduction to Political Communication Fifth Edition

Intro to Politics Communication (5th edn)-p.qxp 9/2/11 10:55 Page 115

ADVERTISING
‘simplistic dualities’ have always been at the centre of campaigning (1992,
p. 44). There is, in the US as well as other countries, growing acceptance that
there is nothing intrinsically wrong with negative campaigning, if the claims
made are fair and reasonable. Lies and deception are not acceptable, of
course, but they are hardly unique to our political culture. Modern media give
attack ads more reach and visibility, but did not invent them or the principles
of political competition underpinning them. Attack is as much part of the
political process as defence, and if modern advertisers do it with ever-
increasing slickness and sophistication, it seems pointless, indeed futile, to
spend too much intellectual energy on condemning them. As Diamond and
Bates put it, in the history of political advertising, as in so many other forms
of political communication, ‘the political golden age of the past, upon close
inspection, turns out to be made of brass’ (1992, p. 384).
In Britain, with its distinctive traditions and conventions, the issues are
rather different. The controversy which Conservative government advertis-
ing for its 1980s privatisation campaigns provoked, fuelled by legislation
(quoted on p. 109) prohibiting local governments from using public revenues
for political advertising purposes, has long called into question the logic of
a system which prevents political advertising on television and radio, while
allowing the government to spend hundreds of millions of pounds promoting
ideologically based policies. New Labour has also been charged with using
public money to promote policy, as in the funds earmarked for education
about the euro. Advocates of reform have argued, reasonably enough, that
since such campaigns are clearly ‘political’ and paid for by the tax-payer,
other organisations with political objectives, such as environmental groups,
trade unions and even political parties, should be permitted to purchase
broadcast advertising time at commercial rates, as is the case in the US.
There, pressure groups and political organisations of all kinds can buy up
television time to protest, nationally or locally, about the environment, or
factory closures, or any of the issues around which political campaigns
regularly develop. Why not in Britain, therefore?
The future of political advertising has taken on greater urgency as the
British broadcasting system becomes more commercialised and the financial
pressures on broadcasters increase. Can the political parties take it for granted
that they will always have access to free airtime in the form of PPBs and PEBs?
When ratings are everything in a broadcasting system increasingly run as a
profit-making industry, will media managers be content to provide prime-time
slots free of charge to pontificating politicians? Quite possibly not, argued a
confidential internal Labour Party document in the late 1980s, warning that
‘parties may be forced to find ways of entering this hostile broadcasting
environment directly, either through paid political advertising . . . or by the
production of programmes or by sponsorship of programmes. Naturally such
developments would be costly and the richest party – or the party with the
richest friends – would be best able to take any advantages there might be’.

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