Page 140 - An Introduction to Political Communication Second Edition

ADVER TISING

such as environmental groups, trade unions, and even political parties,
should be permitted to purchase broadcast advertising time at
commercial rates, as is the case in the United States. There, pressure
groups and political organisations of all kinds can buy up television
time to protest, nationally or locally, about the environment, or
factory closures, or any of the issues around which political campaigns
regularly develop. Why not in Britain, therefore?
The future of political advertising has taken on greater urgency
as the British broadcasting system becomes more commercialised
and the financial pressures on broadcasters increase. Can the
political parties take it for granted that they will always have access
to free airtime in the form of PPBs and PEBs? When ratings are
everything in a broadcasting system increasingly run as a profit-
making industry, will media managers be content to provide prime-
time slots free of charge to pontificating politicians? Quite possibly
not, argued a confidential internal Labour Party document in the
late 1980s, warning that ‘parties may be forced to find ways of
entering this hostile broadcasting environment directly, either
through paid political advertising…or by the production of
programmes or by sponsorship of programmes. Naturally such
developments would be costly and the richest party—or the party
with the richest friends —would be best able to take any advantages
there might be’.
And here, precisely, is the great danger, as opponents of paid
political advertising on British broadcasting perceive it. As was noted
in Chapter 3, the growing importance in political campaigning of
paid-for media inevitably favours those who can pay, and
discriminates against those who cannot. In an unequal society, in
which political and economic resources are already closely linked,
the concentration of power and the disenfranchisement of the
economically deprived would be even greater than it currently is. In
Britain, to put it simply, the political party with the richest friends
and supporters would have much greater access to paid-for broadcast
advertising than their opponents.
To some extent the debate about political advertising parallels
that on the future of broadcast news and current affairs (McNair,
1999). In a media environment where wavelength scarcity is no longer
a determining factor, and in which there is a multitude of channels
beaming to increasingly fragmented, ‘targeted’ groups, why not allow
some overt political advertising, as is permitted in the United States
and other countries? We have it in our print media, so why not on
television and radio?

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