Page 181 - An Introduction to Political Communication Third Edition

COMMUNICATING POLITICS

predecessors, at the heart of the British government’s information
management system. He chaired the Meeting of Information
Officers, a committee comprising the senior public relations officials
in Whitehall; co-ordinated the news management work of govern-
ment departments, including relations with ‘the Lobby’ (see below);
and in 1989 was appointed to head the GIS (and with it, the COI).
In Robert Harris’s view, by the close of the Thatcher era Ingham had
become a de-facto ‘Minister of Information’ rather than a neutral
public servant (1991). In this capacity he orchestrated and directed
governmental communication in conformity with the interests, not
of the public as a whole but of his government and, in particular, of
his Prime Minister.
A key instrument of Ingham’s communicative work was the
‘Lobby’ system, identified by Cockerell et al. as ‘the Prime Minister’s
most useful tool for the political management of the news’ (1984,
p. 33). The Lobby was established in 1884 as a means of enabling
parliamentary correspondents to gain access to authoritative
information about political events and governmental business. So
called because journalists originally assembled in the lobby of the
House of Commons, the system was institutionalised in 1921 and
persists to the present day. Bernard Ingham describes the workings
of the Lobby thus:

Press officers speak as frankly as they feel able to members
[of the Lobby], either individually or collectively, on a
background basis: i.e. the journalist does not identify his
source precisely in writing his story. . . . This method of
communication with journalists is universally practised in
government and other circles the world over as a means of
opening up the relationship [between government and
media].
(1991, p. 158)

Critics dispute both Ingham’s optimistic reading of the Lobby’s
impact on government–media relations, and his assertion of its
‘universality’. In Robert Harris’s view:

by the late 1970s, most countries had a straightforward
government spokesman – a political appointee who would
brief the press, appear on radio and television, and
promote the official line. But in Britain, the spokesman was
not only anonymous: he acted in accordance with quasi-

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