Page 68 - An Introduction to Political Communication Second Edition

THE POLITICAL MEDIA

journalistic distancing from the opinions expressed in political
debates, and a determination not to confuse the expression of opinion
with the reporting of fact. The broadcasters’ guiding principle of
impartiality went further in seeking to ensure, from as early as 1923,
‘that on every occasion when political issues were touched on the
three parties should be given as nearly as possible equal attention’
(Ibid., p.26).
The fact that airtime has been a scarce resource (at least until
the advent of cable, satellite and digital television) determined that
the impartiality principle be retained by British broadcasters
throughout the twentieth century, with some exceptions (such as
coverage of Northern Ireland). Opportunities for the expression of
political opinion by broadcasting journalists were thus extremely
limited. The press, by contrast, with its particular role in the free
exchange, or ‘marketplace’ of ideas, were permitted, and indeed
expected, to take up political positions. They were ‘partial’, as
opposed to the studied impartiality of the broadcasters. This meant
that even after the British press abandoned their organisational
links with political parties in the nineteenth century (Negrine, 1993),
individual newspapers continued to have views and expressed them
in their content. The democratic principle was preserved in so far
as newspapers and periodicals expressed a plurality of opinions,
corresponding to the variety of opinions circulating in the public
sphere. The diversity of the party system was paralleled in the
pluralism of the press.
In adhering to these principles, therefore—objectivity and
impartiality for broadcasting, partisanship and advocacy for the
press—the media performed, in their different ways, their democratic
role. And indeed, as audience research and public opinion surveys
have consistently shown, the media have in the course of the twentieth
century come to represent for most people, most of the time, their
primary source of political information. The press and broadcasting
have become ‘the principal means of “mediating”, that is, standing
between people and the world and reporting to them what they could
not see or experience themselves’ (Nimmo and Combs, 1983, p.12)
[their emphasis]. As Jay Blunder puts it, ‘at a time when the public’s
confidence in many social and political institutions has steeply
declined…voters have become more dependent on media
resources…for impressions of what is at stake, as previous suppliers
of guiding frameworks have lost their credibility’ (1987, p.170). The
media not only provide cognitive knowledge, informing us about
what is happening, but they also order and structure political reality,

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