Page 92 - An Introduction to Political Communication Second Edition

THE MEDIA AS POLITICAL ACTORS

are in terms of party preference. Individual newspapers actively
campaign on behalf of their preferred party and denigrate or criticise
the others. The popular tabloid press will do so in an openly
propagandistic, ‘populist’ manner, accompanied by various levels of
distortion, untruth, and sensationalism, while the broadsheet
newspapers will outline their views in more reasoned terms. Both
will select news stories with an eye to constructing a particular image
(positive or negative) of a party. James Curran’s analysis of 1980s
press coverage of the London Labour Party—the ‘loony left’, as it
became known—shows clearly how some local and national
newspapers attempted to smear Labour councillors in the capital by
associating them with extreme or bizarre political crusades (1987).
In many of the cases examined, stories reported as ‘fact’ were
manufactured or exaggerated until they had only a tenuous
connection with reality. 1
The so-called ‘quality’ newspapers are also capable of such
coverage. In 1991, not long before the 1992 general election, Rupert
Murdoch’s Sunday Times produced a long report on the Labour leader
2
Neil Kinnock’s ‘links’ with the Soviet Communist Party. Although
the connections were, on close examination of the story, no more
substantial than would be expected between a potential British prime
minister (as Mr Kinnock then was) and the government of another
major power, the construction of the story and the headlines used
implied an altogether more sinister relationship.
‘Straight’ news can, then, be viewed as a form of political
intervention, intended to smear political organisations and influence
voters. In certain situations, such as the conflict in Northern Ireland,
or the Gulf War, news often becomes a blatant form of propaganda,
intended to demonise and dehumanise ‘the enemy’. The Sun’s
reference to Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams (in the period before
the Good Friday peace agreement and the setting up of the Northern
Ireland assembly turned him into a statesman of sorts) as ‘the worst
3
two words in the English language’ can only be viewed in this
light.
In the case of Northern Ireland, and on a wide range of current
political issues—racism, sexual harassment and assault, the future
of the British welfare state—newspapers use their power as
information disseminators to influence the policy-making
environment; to move their readers in certain directions if they can;
and to put pressure on decision-makers in government. Hall et al.’s
still valuable study, Policing the Crisis, showed how, on the issue of
law and order, British newspapers in the 1970s intervened in and

75