Page 85 - An Introduction to Political Communication Second Edition

AN INTRODUCTION TO POLITICAL COMMUNICATION

dealing only with the spectacular, epiphenomenal aspects of social
and political problems, while avoiding the discussion of solutions.
The viewer is shocked, or entertained, or outraged, but not
necessarily any wiser about the underlying causes of the problem
being covered. The entertainment value of events begins to take
precedence over their political importance. Others welcome the
confrontational, subversive style of much of this material, stressing
that much of it is not only more watchable, but more politically
useful than long, detailed and, for many, boring analyses of health
or education policy.
Arguments about tabloidisation aside, commercialisation has also
enhanced the media’s long-standing tendency to pursue ‘pack’
journalism, whereby individual organisations pursue a shared agenda.
When a story is deemed to have become ‘news’ by one organisation,
the others feel compelled to follow suit. This is not necessarily because
the story has ‘objective’ importance, but will often be the product of
editorial assumptions that to be left behind by the pack is dangerous
for an organisation’s commercial position and legitimacy as a news
provider.
In an intensifying commercial environment, therefore, the
political process comes to be seen by journalists as the raw material
of a commodity—news or current affairs—which must eventually
be sold to the maximum number of consumers. Inevitably, those
aspects of the process which are the most sellable are those with
the most spectacular and dramatic features, and which can be told
in those terms. In some cases, such as the cash-for-questions affair,
or the bizarre death of Conservative MP Stephen Milligan in early
1994, it might be thought that the commercial interests of the media
in pursuing a ‘sexy’ news agenda, and the public interest of citizens
in finding out the truth about their political representatives,
coincides. The Stalker affair, as David Murphy asserts, is another
example of the media uncovering uncomfortable truths which any
political establishment would rather leave hidden. This case, and
many others arising from the conflict in Northern Ireland,
demonstrates that ‘the process of media production is an arena of
contest and negotiation in which official sources cannot always
take it for granted that they will be able to set the agenda’ (Miller
and Williams, 1993, p.129).
The important (politically speaking) and the entertaining are not
mutually exclusive. In many instances, however, when commercial
considerations drive both print and broadcast media, pack-like, after
philandering ministers and bishops, sexually deviant MPs, and

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