Page 228 - An Introduction to Political Communication Fifth Edition

Intro to Politics Communication (5th edn)-p.qxp 9/2/11 10:55 Page 207

CONCLUSION
extent that good political communication can influence citizens’ attitudes
and behaviour, economic power translates into political power.
For that reason, it is crucial to the health of the democratic process that
the financing of political communication be monitored and regulated, just
as certain restrictions on the ownership and cross-ownership of media
organisations are insisted upon in most liberal democracies. It should not be
possible, now or in the digitised, multi-channel, relatively unregulated media
system of the future, for the political representatives of big capital to
monopolise communication channels or to bribe their way to communicative
advantage. If the optimistic perspective described above is to have validity,
there must be a ‘level playing field’ for all those competing in the game.
Another weakness of the optimists’ perspective is the continuing exis-
tence of secrecy and manipulation in the sphere of government communi-
cation. We discussed in Chapter 7 how the government of Margaret
Thatcher, like others before and since throughout the capitalist world, was
accused of cynically using the information apparatus at its disposal to
further its own, limited political objectives. As communication becomes still
more important in the political process, it becomes essential for citizens to
have some power and control over which information their elected repre-
sentatives choose to release into the public domain. This is especially true
of international politics, in which citizens may be asked to endorse and
participate in conflict with other countries. Such conflicts may have justi-
fication, or they may not. In deciding which is true in any given case, such
as the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, we remain largely dependent on
information passed through mass media by government and national
security establishments. The degree of accuracy of, and public access to, this
information is itself a matter of (our) national security. In the matter of
governmental information, as was noted above, New Labour in power in
the UK made some significant progress, enacting freedom of information
legislation for the first time in British history and allowing TV documentary-
makers unprecedented access to the decision-making process of such key
ministers as the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Foreign Secretary and the
Prime Minister himself. The ‘fly-on-the-wall’ documentaries transmitted on
British television since the first year of the Labour government, as well as
constituting excellent public relations, offered a valuable insight into the
thinking of politicians and their communication advisers as they went about
their daily business.
Looking beyond the direct control of politicians and their spin doctors,
the last few years saw the power of the internet as a liberalising, even
destabilising force in political communication manifest itself. The exposure
of Bill Clinton’s ‘problems’ with Monica Lewinsky on the Drudge Report
website, and the internet-led disclosure of the British Home Secretary’s
son’s embarrassing tangle with marijuana and a tabloid journalist, were
emblematic of the increasing difficulty politicians face in controlling the

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