Page 90 - An Introduction to Political Communication Fifth Edition

Intro to Politics Communication (5th edn)-p.qxp 9/2/11 10:55 Page 69

THE MEDIA AS POLITICAL ACTORS
seen, have always been more overtly partisan in their approach to political
affairs, perceiving their role as very much that of opinion-articulation. At
election time the views expressed are in terms of party preference. Individual
newspapers actively campaign on behalf of their preferred party and
denigrate or criticise the others. The popular press will do so in an openly
propagandistic, ‘populist’ manner, accompanied by various levels of distor-
tion, untruth and sensationalism, while the broadsheet newspapers will
outline their views in more reasoned terms. Both will select news stories with
an eye to constructing a particular image (positive or negative) of a party.
James Curran’s analysis of 1980s press coverage of the London Labour
Party – the ‘loony Left’, as it became known – shows clearly how some local
and national newspapers attempted to smear Labour councillors in the
capital by associating them with extreme or bizarre political crusades (1987).
In many of the cases examined, stories reported as ‘fact’ were manufactured,
or exaggerated until they had only a tenuous connection with reality. 1
The so-called ‘quality’ newspapers are also capable of such coverage. In
1991, not long before the 1992 general election, Rupert Murdoch’s Sunday
Times produced a long report on the Labour leader Neil Kinnock’s ‘links’
2
with the Soviet Communist Party. Although the connections were, on close
examination of the story, no more substantial than would be expected
between a potential British prime minister (as Mr Kinnock then was) and the
government of another major power, the construction of the story and the
headlines used implied an altogether more sinister relationship.
‘Straight’ news can, then, be deployed as a form of political intervention,
intended to smear political organisations and influence voters. In certain situa-
tions, such as the conflict in Northern Ireland or the Gulf War, news often
becomes a blatant form of propaganda, intended to demonise and dehumanise
‘the enemy’. The Sun’s reference to Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams (in the
period before the Good Friday peace agreement and the setting up of the
Northern Ireland assembly turned him into a statesman of sorts) as ‘the worst
3
two words in the English language’ can only be viewed in this light.
In the case of Northern Ireland, and on a wide range of current political
issues – racism, sexual harassment and assault, the future of the British wel-
fare state, immigration and the war on terror – newspapers use their power
as information disseminators to influence the policy-making environment; to
move their readers in certain directions if they can; and to put pressure on
decision-makers in government. Hall et al.’s still valuable study, Policing the
Crisis, showed how, on the issue of law and order, British newspapers in the
1970s intervened in and contributed to a debate about the crime of mugging
(1978). In a ‘spiral of deviance’ the press first highlighted the ‘problem’ –
which, these authors showed, emerged primarily as a consequence of changes
in policing policy in London – and gave it a meaning in terms of the UK’s
‘copying’ of American crime waves (a pattern repeated in more recent
discussions of ‘crack’, ‘yardies’, and the rise in illegally held firearms). Then

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