Page 45 - An Introduction to Political Communication Fifth Edition

Intro to Politics Communication (5th edn)-p.qxp 9/2/11 10:55 Page 24

POLITICS IN THE AGE OF MEDIATION
is inevitably diminished. To the extent that citizens are subject to manipu-
lation, rather than exposed to information, democracy loses its authenticity
and becomes something rather more sinister.
The distinction between ‘persuasion’, which is a universally recognised
function of political actors in a democracy, and manipulation, which carries
with it the negative connotations of propaganda and deceit, is not always an
easy one to draw. But only those with a touching and naive faith in the
ethical purity of politicians would deny that the latter plays an increasingly
important part in modern (or post-modern) democratic politics.
We shall return to the theme of manipulation later (see Chapter 7).
Politicians, however, also seek to conceal information from citizens, some-
times for reasons of what is called ‘national security’, and sometimes to avoid
political embarrassment. The public nature of politics identified as a pre-
requisite of liberal democracy by Bobbio often conflicts with the politicians’
desire for survival, and may be sacrificed as a result. While secrecy, deception
and cover-ups are hardly new features of politics, their continued use and
occasional dramatic exposure (for example in Italy’s tangentopoli scandal
of the mid-1990s) remind us that what the citizen receives as political
information in the public sphere is often an incomplete and partial picture
of reality. We may be conscious of that incompleteness when, for example,
secrecy legislation is deployed on national security grounds. More com-
monly, the fact of concealment is itself concealed from the audience, unless
a journalist or campaigner succeeds in making it public.
Manipulation of opinion and concealment (or suppression) of incon-
venient information are strategies emanating from political actors them-
selves, pursued through media institutions. In some cases, journalists will
attempt to publicise and expose what is hidden. As we shall see in Chapter
4, the media often have an interest in playing the watchdog role over the
politicians. On the other hand, the media may be complicit in the politicians’
concealment of sensitive information (if, for example, a news organisation is
strongly committed to a government it may choose to ignore or downplay
an otherwise newsworthy story which could damage that government).
More generally, there are many aspects of the process of media production
which in themselves make media organisations vulnerable to strategies of
political manipulation.
In 1962 Daniel Boorstin coined the term ‘pseudo-event’ in response to
what he saw as the increasing tendency of news and journalistic media to
cover ‘unreal’, unauthentic ‘happenings’. This tendency, he argued, was
associated with the rise from the nineteenth century onwards of the popular
press and a correspondingly dramatic increase in the demand for news
material. The first interview with a public figure was conducted in the US in
1859, and the first American press release issued in 1907. ‘As the costs of
printing and then broadcasting increased, it became financially necessary to
keep the presses always at work and the TV screen always busy. Pressures

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