Page 98 - An Introduction to Political Communication Fifth Edition

Intro to Politics Communication (5th edn)-p.qxp 9/2/11 10:55 Page 77

THE MEDIA AS POLITICAL ACTORS
Of course, these formats have always been strictly controlled, with panels,
audiences and questions carefully selected so as to minimise the chance of
extreme positions getting on air or of excessive confrontation between
participants breaking the mood of polite, parliamentary style debate. But as
social deference has declined in recent years and citizens grow used to treating
their politicians like equals, traditional debate-show formats have come to be
seen as rather tame and excessively rule-governed. In America, meanwhile,
the rise of the ‘confessional’ talk-show has shown a new approach. In
response, the British schedules have seen a growth in the number of more
lively, unpredictable talk-shows, as well as the reform of established
programmes like Question Time (McNair et al., 2003). In the latter case,
audience members are now invited to speak more freely than they once did,
and to ‘vote’ at the end of debates. The chairman (at the time of writing,
David Dimbleby) intervenes on behalf of the audience more aggressively than
was traditionally the case, embarrassing the sometimes reluctant panelists
into going beyond political ‘waffle’ and answering a question with some
degree of clarity and directness. The BBC and other broadcasters such as
Channel 4 continually seek new ways of organising public debate on
television so that it is informative, educational and entertaining. Although
they have had varying degrees of success, all such experiments are valuable
attempts, as Livingstone and Lunt put it, to establish ‘new forms of
relationship between experts and laity’ (1994, p. 131).

In the audience discussion programme, experts [politicians in
particular] and lay people are put together, setting an agenda of
social issues and offering both established elites and ordinary people
the opportunity at least to discuss the lived experience of current
affairs issues in relation to expert solutions.
(Ibid.)

Broadcast punditry
Notwithstanding the requirements of impartiality imposed on the
broadcasters in these and other contexts, there are some formats in which
broadcasting journalists, like their press counterparts, can go beyond the
mere reporting of politics and move into the role of active participants. At
the most general level, broadcasting works as part of the wider media system
to define agendas and ‘political realities’ at any given time. Television and
radio to a large extent follow the news agenda set by the press, one set of
media feeding and reinforcing another’s perceptions of what is important.
Straight news programmes do not, for the reasons already mentioned,
stray far beyond the narrow reportage function. Mainstream bulletins on
BBC1 and ITV, as one would expect, move quickly through the day’s events,
dealing only briefly with each. Moments of definition are included, however,

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