Page 186 - An Introduction to Political Communication Second Edition

PRESSURE GROUP POLITICS

communication, designed to highlight the nature of the Soviet threat
on the one hand, and the resolution of NATO governments on the
other. Their impact on public opinion at the time is difficult to
ascertain, but they had the unintended effect of increasing the
newsworthiness of the peace movement, adding to its ‘cultural capital’
and legitimising it as a definer of events. Once it became clear that
members of the politico-military establishment took CND and the
other anti-nuclear organisations seriously, media organisations
followed suit. In one notable example of this effect, Mr Heseltine’s
announcement in 1983 that his government would be spending some
£1 million of public money on anti-CND propaganda generated
numerous headlines for the peace movement, and significantly raised
its profile as a legitimate participant in the nuclear debate. While an
innovative approach to communication and media management
permitted the peace movement to gain access to news media, official
responses to that access reinforced its visibility and authority. The
Defence Secretary’s ‘cultural capital’ was transferred, in part, to a
competitor.
It would be misleading to suggest, however, that the peace
movement came anywhere near to dominating the debate as mediated
by broadcasting and the press. Firstly, the defence establishment used
its privileged access to intervene at key moments in the peace
movement’s campaigning. I have described in detail elsewhere how
governmental news management ensured that coverage of a major
CND demonstration held at Easter, 1983 was ‘framed’ by stories
about the Soviet threat (McNair, 1988), a rhetorical device which
throughout the ‘new Cold War’ was routinely presented by journalists
as objective fact rather than contestable assertion. The presentation
of an anti-nuclear viewpoint was consistently contextualised by a
wider ‘reality’, that of the threat nuclear weapons were supposed to
protect us against.
Secondly, the content of ‘peace movement news’ was typically
lacking in explanation and analysis of the anti-nuclear argument.
While journalists undoubtedly gave extensive and often sympathetic
coverage to the people involved in demonstrations, there was rarely
any attempt to examine the detail of their case, or indeed its validity.
As was noted earlier, the very nature of news militates against
considered analysis of events in preference for coverage of the
epiphenomenal, easily graspable aspects. In this respect the peace
movement, like other pressure groups (and political actors in
general) found it difficult to have its arguments, as opposed to its
existence, reported. One should qualify this observation by noting

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