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Intro to Politics Communication (5th edn)-p.qxp 9/2/11 10:55 Page 58

POLITICS IN THE AGE OF MEDIATION
marginalises or excludes others. In coverage of politics, as noted above, impar-
tiality in practice means giving equal representation (representation propor-
tionate to an organisation’s electoral support) to the main political parties,
particularly during election campaigns. It does not mean the reporting of all
significant participants in a political debate. In Northern Ireland, ‘impartiality’
was explicitly withheld from the para-military organisations and their political
wings, because they operated outside the established democratic procedures of
the United Kingdom’s constitutional system. The broadcasting ban introduced
by the Conservative government in 1989, and removed only in 1994, pre-
vented television and radio from airing the voices of some elected Northern
Ireland politicians because they were deemed to support those who challenged
the legitimacy of the British state.
In this case, from the viewpoint of the hegemonic school, the media were
erecting a barrier between legitimate and illegitimate political discourse,
excluding the latter from the public sphere.
The media also contribute to the maintenance of consent, it is argued, by
reporting problematic events and processes in ways favourable to the
established order. Major industrial disputes, overseas military expeditions (we
exclude here wars of national survival, such as the Second World War) and
domestic opposition to key military policies, are examples of issues which
tend to be reported from an establishment perspective, thus arguably
influencing the political environment in a particular direction. Chomsky and
Herman’s Manufacturing Consent makes explicit reference to this process in
its title, analysing how the American media, over many decades, have pre-
sented their audiences with a view of the world and its conflicts which
corresponds closely to the interests of the US military-industrial complex
(1988). Third World liberation struggles were reported as ‘communist
aggression’; attempts to restrain economic exploitation of the Third World by
US companies as ‘threats to US interests’; and vicious repression in East
Timor, Chile and elsewhere as legitimate and anti-subversive activity, if not
ignored entirely.
No comparable volume of analysis is available for the British case, but a
number of studies claim to have found similar patterns of coverage (Glasgow
University Media Group, 1985; McNair, 1988). The British media, like those
of other capitalist democracies, have frequently functioned to police the
parameters of legitimate dissent, presenting citizens with a view of the world
consistent with the maintenance of the status quo. They have done so for a
variety of reasons. In some cases, the political demands of proprietors are
important (as is apparent with the Murdoch newspapers). In broadcasting
and the press, structural dependence on official sources frequently allows an
official view of events to prevail. British broadcasting is part of an
established culture of shared values and ideological assumptions, which
inform the construction of news. All these factors have been advanced as
reasons for the deep pro-systemic bias of the media.

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