Page 42 - An Introduction to Political Communication Second Edition

POLITICS, DEMOCRACY AND THE MEDIA

development, in such circumstances the voter may reasonably feel
that a vote for one party or another will have little or no impact on
the conditions and quality of life.
And what of the British Liberal Democrat, who sees his or her
party permanently excluded from national political power despite
gaining up to 25 per cent of the vote at general elections? Democratic
procedures, in short, usually contain anomalies and biases which
make them less than democratic.

Capitalism and power
Socialist and Marxist critiques of liberal democracy are more
fundamental, arguing that the real loci of power in capitalist societies
are hidden behind formal political procedures: in the boardrooms of
big business; in the higher reaches of the civil service and security
apparatus; in a host of secretive, non-elected institutions. The people
may elect a Labour government, the argument goes, but any attempt
to implement a genuinely socialist programme (even if the government
wanted to do so) inevitably meets with resistance in the form of
bureaucratic obstruction, flights of capital abroad, the use of the
Royal prerogative, and dirty tricks of the type described by Peter
Wright in Spycatcher (1989). From this perspective, the democratic
process as pursued in Britain and most other developed capitalist
societies is merely a facade, behind which the real levers of political
and economic power are wielded by those for whom the citizenry
never has an opportunity to vote.
Many of these criticisms are accepted even by the most ardent
defenders of liberal democracy. Let us assume, however, that the
procedures of democratic politics are fundamentally sound; that
election results are meaningful and effective in shaping governments
and their behaviour; and that voters will respond rationally to the
political information they receive from the media and elsewhere. Were
all these assumptions justified, we may still identify a fundamental
weakness of democratic theory as it relates to the media. According
to the theory, the citizen is a rational subject who absorbs the
information available and makes appropriate choices. He or she is,
as it were, the repository of knowledge existing out there in the world,
which is converted unproblematically into political behaviour. In
reality, however, what the citizen experiences as political information
is the product of several mediating processes which are more or less
invisible to him or her.

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