Page 64 - An Introduction to Political Communication Second Edition

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THE POLITICAL MEDIA

The media, or those who work in them, as was suggested in Chapter
1, should be viewed as important political actors in themselves. Not
only do they transmit the messages of political organisations to the
public, but they transform them through various processes of news-
making and interpretation. What the politician wishes to say is not
necessarily what the media report him or her as having said. In
addition, the media make statements about politics in their own right,
in the form of commentaries, editorials, and interview questions.
These statements may have a significant impact on the wider political
environment. The relationship between the media and the political
process is a dialectical one, involving action and reaction. The media
report on and analyse political activity, but they are also part of it,
available as a resource for political actors and their advisers. The
latter thus have a major interest in understanding how the media
work, and how best to achieve their communication objectives
through them.
This chapter and the next address each of these issues in turn,
beginning with an analysis of the media environment confronted
by contemporary political actors. This sets out the institutional
and organisational frameworks within which the main mass media
in Britain are organised, and the relationships which they have to
political institutions. We then analyse the media production
process, focussing on those aspects of it—journalism in
particular—in which the politicians are most interested, and the
various approaches taken to understanding the media’s impact
on individual citizens, political organisations, and the wider
political environment. In Chapter 5, we examine the ways in which
media play a direct role in politics.

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