Page 101 - An Introduction to Political Communication Second Edition

AN INTRODUCTION TO POLITICAL COMMUNICATION

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, in the form, firstly, of
special correspondents. Like the political columnists of the press, the
correspondents are in a sense pundits although, unlike the latter,
their subjectivity and interpretative work must be confined to
analysing the situation, as opposed to instructing, and appealing to,
the audience. Channel 4 News’ Elinor Goodman, for example, will
frequently be asked by the programme’s presenters to assess or make
sense of a political event, be it a party leadership crisis or a crucial
debate in the House of Commons. She will do so from a position of
authority, based on her track record as an ‘expert’ in broadcasting
terms, and on the fact that she clearly has access to reliable elite
sources. In this respect she, and her colleagues like the BBC’s Robin
Oakley or John Sargent, trade on the same privileged access to elites
enjoyed by the senior press columnists, and build their status as
pundits upon that access. Where Hugo Young can say what he thinks

84