Page 155 - An Introduction to Political Communication Third Edition

COMMUNICATING POLITICS

The first political public relations consultancy was established by
husband and wife team Clem Whittaker and Leone Baxter in Los
Angeles in 1933, under the name of Campaigns Inc. Dan Nimmo
attributes this to the fact that in California, more than in any other
US state in the 1930s, referenda were extensively used to resolve
political issues. Moreover, the population of California was
immigrant-based, and thus more ethnically and socially diverse
than in some other parts of the US. Traditional party organisations
were weak. In this environment of particular sensitivity to (volatile)
public opinion, political consultants, Nimmo argues, in effect filled
the space occupied elsewhere by party political machines. From
Campaigns Inc. developed what Nimmo calls a nationwide ‘service
industry’ (1970, p. 39), facilitating political communication
between parties, candidates and their publics; designing and
producing publicity and propaganda material; raising funds;
advising on policy and presentation, and polling public opinion –
becoming, in short, ‘the stage managers and the creative writers of
living-theatre politics’ (Sabato, 1981, p. 111).
By the 1970s there were hundreds of full-time political consultants
in the US, and their numbers were growing in Britain and other
democratic countries. In Britain in the 1980s the names of Peter
Mandelson, Tim Bell, the Saatchi brothers, and Harvey Thomas
became inseparable from the political process. The remainder of
this chapter examines the means and methods by which political
parties, at times of election and in the intervals between them, with
the help of their political consultants, seek to manage the media in
such ways as to maximise favourable coverage and to minimise that
which is damaging to the organisations’ interests.
The discussion will be organised around four types of political
public relations activity. First, we address forms of media manage-
ment – those activities designed to tap into the needs and demands
of the modern media and thus maximise politicians’ access to, and
exposure in, free media. These activities chiefly comprise the
manufacture of medialities – media-friendly events which will tend
to attract the attention of media gate-keepers, all other things
being equal, and to keep public awareness of the party high. The
objective of this activity is, of course, not simply to preserve a
party’s visibility but also to have its definition of political problems
and solutions covered. In this sense, we may also think of it as issues
management.
Second, we examine the practice of image-management in
political public relations: on the one hand, the personal image of the

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