Page 83 - An Introduction to Political Communication Second Edition

AN INTRODUCTION TO POLITICAL COMMUNICATION

always intent) of the media, and others such as Hallin, who prefer to
emphasise the media’s flexibility and adaptability in the context of a
fluid, dynamic political system, governed not by a single ruling class
but by rotating elites drawn from different parties and factions within
parties. In the latter perspective, the adaptability of the media to
shifting lines of debate is esential to the retention of their legitimacy
as facilitators of political discourse in the public sphere and hence,
ultimately, to their ‘hegemonic’ role.

POLITICS AND MEDIA PRODUCTION

Many of the features of media output discussed in the previous section
can be better understood by an analysis of the media production
process: the conventions, practices, and constraints which shape the
output of political journalism, in ways which sometimes favour the
politician, and at other times subvert him or her. These can be grouped
into three categories: ‘commercial’, ‘organisational’, and
‘professional’.

Commercialisation
On commercial constraints Greg Philo notes that ‘a simple truth
underpins the everyday practices of the media institutions and the
journalists who work within them—that they are all at some level in
competition with each other to sell stories and maximise audiences
… They must do this at a given cost and at a set level of resources’
(1993a, p.111).
As was noted at the beginning of this chapter the main purpose of
the press, since its emergence as a mass medium in the nineteenth
century, has been to produce information in the commodity form,
and to maximise advertising revenue by selling that information to
the largest possible number of readers. Broadcasting, on the other
hand, for most of its relatively brief existence, has been sheltered in
most countries from naked commercialism. In Britain, the BBC, as
we have noted, was defined from the outset as a ‘public service’ and
given lofty goals of cultural enlightenment and education. ITV, too,
while a commercial organisation in so far as its revenues derived
from advertising, was required under law to broadcast a substantial
proportion of news and current affairs programming, and to make
those programmes within the same rules of impartiality which guided
the BBC.

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