Page 167 - An Introduction to Political Communication Second Edition

AN INTRODUCTION TO POLITICAL COMMUNICATION

for this observer, himself a former Whitehall ‘insider’, is about the
control and management of information for the purpose of
protecting and insulating power from the critical gaze of the public,
rather than empowering the latter and drawing them into the
governmental process. Cockerell et al. concur that ‘what government
chooses to tell us through its public relations machine is one thing;
the information in use by participants in the country’s real
government is another’ (1984, p.9).
The British government first established an apparatus of media
management during the First World War. Known as the Official Press
Bureau, the principles of secrecy to which it adhered have been
retained in the governmental information apparatus ever since. In
this respect British political culture may be seen as ‘closed’ and
secretive, as distinct from the relative openness of the United States
system. This is reflected in legislation such as the Official Secrets
Act, and the disclosure rules which prevent some official secrets being
revealed to the public for 30, 40, or even 100 years after the event.
One of the key pledges of the new Labour government was to
introduce, for the first time in Britain, a Freedom of Information
Act. As this edition went to press, the legislation was reported to be
still in preparation for eventual passage through the House of
Commons. Early reports indicated that it would indeed go far in the
direction of eroding the culture of closure and secrecy surrounding
official information in Britain, although there would be many
exceptions and loop holes, such as those necessary for law
enforcement and other security matters.

‘Pro-active’ information management

Governmental information management may have a number of
functions. The activities of a body such as the Central Office of
Information are ostensibly about informing the public in a neutral
manner, on matters of interest and concern to them, such as civil
defence procedures or the activities of the British Council abroad.
In recent years, however, the COI has been ‘co-opted’ into a more
overtly political role. In the early 1980s the Conservative
government employed it to counteract the activities of the anti-
nuclear protest movement. Later in the decade the COI’s spending
on advertising tripled, largely to publicise the government’s
privatisation campaign. In so far as this communication activity
was intended to inform the British public about the fact of
privatisation, it did not breach the parameters of the COI’s

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