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Intro to Politics Communication (5th edn)-p.qxp 9/2/11 10:55 Page 60

POLITICS IN THE AGE OF MEDIATION
allegations of cover-up and lying under oath did evoke memories of
Watergate and the implications of presidential impeachment. What it did do,
unquestionably, like Watergate twenty-five years before, was to demystify
and undermine the institutional power of the American presidency.
However we choose to interpret the significance of media criticism of the
establishment, it is clear that assertions of a ‘hegemonic role’ for the media
must be able to accommodate those frequent examples of the ‘breakdown of
consensus’ and the splitting of elite groups. To that end we may usefully
distinguish between the work of Chomsky and others, who stress the
‘propagandistic’ nature (if not necessarily always intent) of the media, and
others such as Hallin, who prefer to emphasise the media’s flexibility and
adaptability in the context of a fluid, dynamic political system, governed not
by a single ruling class but by rotating elites drawn from different parties and
factions within parties. In the latter perspective, the adaptability of the media
to shifting lines of debate is essential to the retention of their legitimacy as
facilitators of political discourse in the public sphere and hence, ultimately,
to their ‘hegemonic’ role.

POLITICS AND MEDIA PRODUCTION

Many of the features of media output discussed in the previous section can
be better understood by an analysis of the media production process: the
conventions, practices and constraints which shape the output of political
journalism, in ways which sometimes favour the politician, and at other
times subvert him or her. These can be grouped into three categories:
‘commercial’, ‘organisational’ and ‘professional’.

Commercialisation
On commercial constraints Greg Philo notes that ‘a simple truth underpins
the everyday practices of the media institutions and the journalists who work
within them – that they are all at some level in competition with each other
to sell stories and maximise audiences. . . . They must do this at a given cost
and at a set level of resources’ (1993a, p. 111).
The main purpose of the press, since its emergence as a mass medium in
the nineteenth century, has been to produce information in commodity form,
and to maximise advertising revenue by selling that information to the
largest possible number of readers. Broadcasting, on the other hand, for most
of its relatively brief existence, has been sheltered in many countries from
naked commercialism. In Britain, the BBC, as we have noted, was defined
from the outset as a ‘public service’ and given lofty goals of cultural
enlightenment and education. ITV, too, while a commercial organisation in
so far as its revenues derived from advertising, was required under law to

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