Page 166 - An Introduction to Political Communication Fifth Edition

Intro to Politics Communication (5th edn)-p.qxp 9/2/11 10:55 Page 145

POLITICAL PUBLIC RELATIONS
a matter for insiders and not something that need concern the general public.
Decisions are taken in secret by a small group of ministers and senior civil
servants and then the effort is made to sell those policies to the public
through the government propaganda machine’ (ibid., p. 177). Governmental
communication for this observer, himself a former Whitehall ‘insider’, is
about the control and management of information for the purpose of
protecting and insulating power from the critical gaze of the public, rather
than empowering the latter and drawing them into the governmental
process. Cockerell et al. concur that ‘what government chooses to tell us
through its public relations machine is one thing; the information in use by
participants in the country’s real government is another’ (1984, p. 9).
The British government first established an apparatus of media manage-
ment during the First World War. Known as the Official Press Bureau, the
principles of secrecy to which it adhered have been retained in the govern-
mental information apparatus ever since. In this respect British political
culture may be seen as ‘closed’ and secretive, as distinct from the relative
openness of the US system. This is reflected in legislation such as the Official
Secrets Act and the disclosure rules which prevent some official secrets being
revealed to the public for 30, 40, or even 100 years after the event. One of
the key pledges of the new Labour government in 1997 was to introduce for
the first time in Britain, a Freedom of Information Act. FOI was duly enacted
in January 2005 and has had a significant impact on government com-
munication. Stephen Coleman discusses the implications of Freedom of
Information for UK government communication in a recent essay (2009).
He, like most observers, welcomes the enhanced transparency surround-
ing official data, but some have argued that too much access to official
information can make government more difficult, not less. One dramatic
story made possible by FOI was the exposure of UK MPs’ expenses by the
Daily Telegraph newspaper in 2009. Over a period of months, becoming
years, every detail of MPs’ more bizarre expense claims – such as the
installation of a duck pond in one MP’s garden – was made public. The
British political class was plunged into crisis as some resigned, others were
prosecuted, and many were removed from office at the 2010 election. The
expenses scandal was seen by many observers as a major contributing factor
to the Labour government’s defeat. Athough MPs of all parties were found
to have abused the archaic and lax expenses regime, the incumbent party
suffered the most at the hands of public opinion, and paid the price
electorally.

‘Pro-active’ information management

Governmental information management may have a number of functions. The
activities of a body such as the Central Office of Information are ostensibly
about informing the public in a neutral manner on matters of interest and

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