Page 140 - An Introduction to Political Communication Fifth Edition

Intro to Politics Communication (5th edn)-p.qxp 9/2/11 10:55 Page 119

POLITICAL PUBLIC RELATIONS
Gaining access to free media is not without costs, of course. It requires a
more or less professional apparatus of public relations advisers, which must
be paid for by the political organisation concerned. Constructing or manu-
facturing the events and contexts through which politicians can acquire free
media access may be expensive in money and time. Nevertheless, we will use
the term ‘free media’ here to distinguish those practices which fall under the
broad headings of ‘political marketing’ and ‘public relations’ from those of
the advertising world described in Chapter 6.
Politicians like free media because, unlike advertising, their role in it is not
that of authorship. When a politician is reported on the news, editorial
responsibility for the selection of ‘soundbites’ broadcast, and the inter-
pretation placed upon them, is seen to belong with the journalist. When
Margaret Thatcher appeared on the BBC’s live Jimmy Young Radio Show (as
she frequently did during her time in office) the things she said were
inevitably perceived rather differently than if she had addressed television
viewers within the context of a party political broadcast. Tony Blair’s
frequent appearances on access programmes such as Question Time and the
Nicky Campbell radio show were calculated to have the same quality of
authenticity and spontaneity, especially when, as in the tradition of British
access broadcasting (McNair et al., 2003), members of the public are able to
engage directly with the politician. Such messages are ‘less manufactured’
than advertisements and, as such, may be thought to carry more legitimacy
and credibility. Even if such a conversation is lighthearted and avoids politics
entirely, the audience may still feel that a ‘truer’ picture of the politician
emerges. The lack of control and apparent spontaneity of most free-media
scenarios heightens ‘believability’.
This quality of free media is a double-edged sword, however. To the extent
that a politician’s appearance on a news or discussion programme is genuinely
outside his or her editorial control, the scope for mistakes (from the politician’s
perspective) is clear. Broadcast interviews can be hostile as well as deferential.
Misjudgments can be made about the impact of a political event once it has
passed into the hands of the media, as happened famously with the Labour
Party’s Sheffield rally during the 1992 election campaign (see p. 130). When
in 1983 Margaret Thatcher was questioned by a well-prepared viewer on live
national television about the sinking of the Belgrano she revealed to millions
of viewers an unpleasantly arrogant side of her personality.
The advantage of free media exposure for politicians is founded on the
awareness of the audience that such appearances are ‘live’, or if not live in
the technical sense, something more than a manufactured political adver-
tisement. And the audience knows this because politicians frequently slip up,
or encounter hostile opposition and criticism when they enter the free media
arena.
A dramatic illustration of this danger occurred in the course of the 2001
UK general election campaign. As Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott

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