Page 157 - An Introduction to Political Communication Third Edition

COMMUNICATING POLITICS

To use such a term conveys, probably accurately, the politicians’
view that the media are valuable but potentially unruly allies in the
political process: essential for public exposure but unpredictable
and with a tendency to display independence. As we saw in
Chapter 4, even the most loyal of a party’s friends in the media (such
as the British ‘Tory’ press before it changed its loyalties in the era of
New Labour) can embarrass and put unwelcome pressure on it. The
relationship of mutual interdependence between political actors
and media organisations described earlier does not preclude
severe criticism of the former by the latter, nor the more routine
monitoring of political power implied by the ‘fourth estate’ watch-
dog role.
In this context media management comprises activities designed
to maintain a positive politician–media relationship, acknowl-
edging the needs which each has of the other, while exploiting the
institutional characteristics of both sets of actor for maximum
advantage. For the politicians, this requires giving the media
organisation what it wants, in terms of news or entertainment,
while exerting some influence over how that something is mediated
and presented to the audience.
As was the case with advertising, it would be a mistake to think
that media management in this sense is new in democratic politics.
Chapter 2 noted that the first newspaper interview with a public
figure was conducted in the US in 1859 (Boorstin, 1962), and that
the first American news release was issued in 1907. The interview
form was imported to Britain in the 1880s, as subsequently were all
the techniques of influencing media coverage pioneered in America
(Silvester, 1993).
We have traced the development of the political public relations
industry from the work of Ivy Lee and Edward Bernays at the turn
of the twentieth century. But, as with advertising, media manage-
ment has increased in political importance in parallel with the
advance of mass communication, television in particular, which has
provided ever more opportunities (and dangers) for politicians to
harness the efforts and skills of professionals, and through them
seek to influence public opinion. Political parties, their leaders
and their public relations advisers have become steadily more
sophisticated in their appreciation of the implications for their
media management efforts of journalistic news values, technical
constraints on news gathering and commercial prerogatives. Since
F. D. Roosevelt’s live radio broadcasts in the 1930s, through Ronald
Reagan’s reprisal of that idea in the 1980s, to Bill Clinton’s ‘meet

136