Page 176 - An Introduction to Political Communication Second Edition

PRESSURE GROUP POLITICS

such flexibility is, indeed, an integral legitimating feature of the media
in a liberal democracy.
As we noted in Chapter 4, the continuing credibility of the media’s
‘Fourth Estate’ role requires, in conditions of liberal democracy, the
maintenance of journalists’ ‘relative autonomy’ from power elites.
While we may readily agree that the majority of the media in capitalist
societies are, for economic, organisational, and ideological reasons,
predisposed to certain sources and viewpoints over others, we must
acknowledge too that media organisations have their own
institutional interests to pursue, which include being seen to be
independent and objective and, in most cases, competitive and
profitable. These imperatives create opportunities for non-elite groups
to gain access to mainstream media.
The question thus arises: what are the conditions in which
marginalised political actors, aspiring to participate in public debate
around an issue, or to put an issue on the media’s and the public’s
agenda, can maximise their ‘definitional power’ and pursue their
political objectives? We must acknowledge at the outset that access
to the media for a particular source is never completely open, but
dependent on such factors as the degree of institutionalisation
accruing to that source; its financial resources; its ‘cultural capital’
or status, and the extent of its entrepreneurship and innovation in
media management. In 1978, Hall et al. argued that

if the tendency towards ideological closure [in news media]
is maintained by the way the different apparatuses are
structurally linked so as to promote the dominant
definitions of events, then the counter-tendency must also
depend on the existence of organised and articulate sources
which generate counter-definitions of the situation. This
depends to some degree on whether the collectivity which
generates counter-ideologies and explanations is a powerful
countervailing force in society; whether it represents an
organised majority or substantial minority; and whether
or not it has a degree of legitimacy within the system or
can win such a position through struggle.
(1978, p.64)

As already noted, such groups usually start from a ‘resource poor’
position, relatively deprived of material and cultural capital. To
compensate for their lack of institutional status and authority,
strategies of media management must be deployed in order to exploit

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