Page 149 - An Introduction to Political Communication Third Edition

COMMUNICATING POLITICS

the concentration of power and the disenfranchisement of the
economically deprived would be even greater than it currently is.
In Britain, to put it simply, the political party with the richest
friends and supporters would have much greater access to paid-for
broadcast advertising than their opponents.
To some extent the debate about political advertising parallels
that on the future of broadcast news and current affairs (McNair,
2003). In a media environment where wavelength scarcity is no
longer a determining factor and in which there is a multitude of
channels beaming to increasingly fragmented, ‘targeted’ groups,
why not allow some overt political advertising, as is permitted in the
US and other countries? We have it in our print media, so why not
on television and radio?
Opposition to this viewpoint is based not only on financial
grounds, but also on resistance to the ‘trivialisation’ of the political
process and the degradation of the public sphere discussed in
Chapter 3. This returns us once again to a debate that continues
to defy neat resolution. As this book went to press, there were no
government plans to permit paid political advertising on British
television or radio, and it seems unlikely that such a form of
political communication will ever be permitted on the main
‘terrestrial’ channels. A consultation paper released by the main
British broadcasters (BBC, ITV, Channels 4 and 5, Independent
Radio) after the 1997 election, with a view to reforming the system
of party political broadcasting in the UK, stressed that ‘there is
little enthusiasm amongst either broadcasters or the political parties
8
to move to a system of paid political advertising’. But some change
is inevitable, probably in the direction of concentrating the trans-
mission of party political broadcasts around election campaigns
and reducing the number of broadcasts which take place outside
campaign periods. For example, the broadcasters would like to
discontinue the tradition of transmitting a ten-minute ‘talking head’
piece to camera by the Chancellor, after the annual Budget Speech
in parliament (which is by convention ‘answered’ by the main
opposition spokespersons). This is argued to be a reasonable reform
in the context of expanding live coverage of parliament and the
extended media coverage of it which now takes place. On the
other hand, should not the public be permitted to hear the
Chancellor explain, in his or her own words, without the mediation
of journalists, what the budget that year is about?
Here and in other features of the British PPB system, new
technologies which allow more and better coverage of parliament

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