Page 229 - An Introduction to Political Communication Second Edition

AN INTRODUCTION TO POLITICAL COMMUNICATION

international politics, in which citizens may be asked to endorse
and participate in conflict with other countries. Such conflicts may
have justification, or they may not. In deciding which is true in any
given case, we are almost entirely dependent on information passed
through mass media by government and national security
establishments. The degree of accuracy of, and public access to,
this information is itself a matter of (our) national security. In the
matter of governmental information, as was noted above, New
Labour in power has made some significant progress, promising
freedom of information legislation for the first time in British history,
and allowing TV documentary-makers unprecedented access to the
decision-making process of such key ministers as the Chancellor of
the Exchequer and the Foreign Secretary. The ‘fly-on-the-wall’
documentaries transmitted on British television in the first year of
the Labour government, as well as constituting excellent public
relations, offered a valuable insight into the thinking of politicians
and their communication advisers as they went about their daily
business.
Looking beyond the direct control of politicians and their spin
doctors, both Britain and America in the late 1990s saw the power
of the Internet as a liberalising, even destabilising force in political
communication manifest itself. The exposure in 1998 of Bill
Clinton’s ‘problems’ with Monica Lewinsky on the Drudge Report
website, and the Internet-led disclosure of the British Home
Secretary’s son’s embarrassing tangle with marijuana and a tabloid
journalist, were emblematic of the increasing difficulty politicians
face in controlling the spread of information which they would
prefer to remain secret. In both of the above cases one can have
sympathy with the ‘victims’ of Internet exposure, and in the end
neither emerged with serious damage. Bill Clinton was more popular
with the American people after Monicagate than before, and Jack
Straw’s predicament in relation to his son’s youthful experimentation
with an illegal vegetable did not harm his image as one of the most
effective Labour ministers of the first Blair term. The speed with
which the news spread, however, and the politicians’ inability to
prevent its public consumption and discussion, give grounds for
some optimism about the future development of democracy. It is
certain that, as the new millennium begins and new communication
technologies evolve further, elites in all spheres of public life will
become more exposed to democratic scrutiny through the media,
and that cannot be a bad thing.

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