Page 107 - An Introduction to Political Communication Third Edition

POLITICS IN THE AGE OF MEDIATION

make sense of a political event, be it a party leadership crisis or a
crucial debate in the House of Commons. She will do so from a
position of authority, based on her track record as an ‘expert’ in
broadcasting terms, and on the fact that she clearly has access to
reliable elite sources. In this respect she and her colleagues trade on
the same privileged access to elites enjoyed by the senior press
columnists, and build their status as pundits upon that access.
Where Hugo Young can say what he thinks about the Conservative
or Labour parties, however, and even presume to advise them on a
suitable course of action, Goodman and her colleagues on other
channels must be satisfied with giving their audiences an insiders’
view of ‘what is really going on’. Their opinions and partialities on
the substance of the issues must remain private. There are subtleties
of language and tone which can be used by a correspondent to
signify suspicion or distrust towards a politician, but such percep-
tions cannot be made explicit.
In general, then, the presenters of main news programmes main-
tain a clear distance from the events they are introducing to their
audiences. They announce the news, and the special correspondent
or political editor defines its meaning and significance. Some
viewers of TV news may detect in a presenter’s facial expression or
voice tone an attitude towards the events being represented, but this
is a deviation from the self-proclaimed norm.

The political interview
The main context in which presenters may openly play a more
active role in the political process is when they have the opportunity
to interview political actors. The increased awareness of the
importance of public relations by political actors means, as we shall
see in Chapter 7, that they routinely make themselves available to
the electronic media for interview whenever there is a news story
which concerns them or on which they are particularly competent
to speak. In the early days of broadcast journalism such interviews
were rare, and were pursued with a tooth-grinding deference on the
part of the journalist, who would function essentially as a cue for
the politician to make a series of pre-prepared, uncontested points.
ITN, when it came on air in the 1950s, was the first British news
organisation seriously to challenge this style, with Robin Day in the
vanguard. His aggressive interviewing style became commonplace,
and is now pursued even by presenters on peak-time news
programmes, much to the chagrin of some politicians. Presenters

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