Page 229 - An Introduction to Political Communication Fifth Edition

Intro to Politics Communication (5th edn)-p.qxp 9/2/11 10:55 Page 208

COMMUNICATING POLITICS
spread of information which they would prefer to remain secret. In both of
the above cases one can have sympathy with the ‘victims’ of internet
exposure, and in the end neither emerged fatally wounded. Bill Clinton was
more popular with the American people after Monicagate than before, and
Jack Straw’s predicament in relation to his son’s youthful experimentation
with an illegal vegetable did not harm his image as one of the most effective
Labour ministers of the Blair government. The speed with which the news
spread, however, and the politicians’ inability to prevent its public con-
sumption and discussion, give grounds for some optimism about the future
development of democracy. As the Wikileaks’ release of US diplomatic cables
in late 2010 so dramatically showed, it is certain that, as new communication
technologies evolve further, and what I have referred to elsewhere as ‘cultural
chaos’ spreads (McNair, 2006), elites in all spheres of public life will become
more exposed to democratic scrutiny through the media, and that cannot be
a bad thing.
In the end, however, the merging of politics and mass communication
described in this book is not a process which can be viewed as unambigu-
ously ‘good’ or ‘bad’ in relation to its implications for democracy. The roots
of the phenomenon – universal suffrage and advancing communication tech-
nology, in the context of a dynamic and expanding market for information
of all kinds – cannot be seen as anything other than positive. Without doubt
it has the potential to bring into being, to an extent unprecedented in human
civilisation, something approaching real democracy, as defined by radical
progressive thinkers from Marx onwards. The contribution of media to our
political life will, of course, continue to be determined by the legal, economic
and social contexts in which they are allowed to function. Vigilance will be
required if those contexts are to be shaped by the views and votes of the
citizens as a whole, and not the particular interests of the wealthy and the
powerful.

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