Page 86 - An Introduction to Political Communication Fifth Edition

Intro to Politics Communication (5th edn)-p.qxp 9/2/11 10:55 Page 65

THE POLITICAL MEDIA
managers, organise the grandest events and produce the slickest press
releases.

THE PROFESSION OF JOURNALISM

Another element of the media production process which can be argued to
favour the establishment is the professional ethic of objectivity itself (and its
close relation, impartiality) to which the majority of political journalists
subscribe. Objectivity, as we noted above, is important to the democratic
process because it permits the media to report political events accurately,
fairly and independently. In concrete terms, the objectivity ethic has
gradually evolved into a set of signifying practices and conventions which,
when present in a piece of journalism, are intended to secure the audience’s
endorsement of its ‘truthfulness’.
These practices include the explicit separation of fact from opinion; the
inclusion in coverage of all opposing sides in a debate (excluding, usually,
terrorists and other non-constitutional actors); and the validation of
journalistic narratives by the quotation of reliable, authoritative sources. It
is fair to say that for most journalists, the most reliable and authoritative
sources when constructing a political story are the established politicians,
their senior civil servants and secretaries, and other leading figures in state
and public organs. If, moreover, these sources have embraced the lessons of
the previous paragraphs – that they should actively seek to supply the media
with material – then not only are they the most reliable and authoritative (a
culturo-political factor) but also the most convenient and accessible from the
journalists’ perspective (an organisational reality). The professional
requirements of objectivity are thus reinforced by the technical constraints
imposed by the news-gathering process.
Conversely, those political actors who lack sophisticated public relations
machinery and are not a part of the established institutions of mainstream
political discourse will tend to be neither especially credible to the journalists
nor particularly convenient as news sources. In Chapter 8 we discuss how
many non-establishment (and indeed anti-establishment) organisations have
learnt to combat these ‘biasing’ features of media production with a variety
of alternative public relations strategies. Although the resources required for
media manipulation (if I may use that term without implying disapproval)
are unequally distributed throughout society, it is possible, as we shall see,
for the PR ‘poor’ to compensate for their absence to some extent by
deploying skill and entrepreneurship.

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