Page 189 - An Introduction to Political Communication Third Edition

COMMUNICATING POLITICS

powerful countervailing force in society; whether it
represents an organised majority or substantial minority;
and whether or not it has a degree of legitimacy within the
system or can win such a position through struggle.
(1978, p. 64)

As already noted, such groups usually start from a ‘resource
poor’ position, relatively deprived of material and cultural capital.
To compensate for their lack of institutional status and authority,
strategies of media management must be deployed in order to
exploit the opportunities for access which exist. Sources which
cannot take media access for granted must work to generate it,
using skill, innovation and knowledge to enhance their value for
media organisations. Such groups can, for example, increase their
newsworthiness by careful attention to interacting with the media,
cultivating contacts and responding to the organisational demands
of media production (for example, issuing news releases in time for
last editions and main evening news bulletins). As Edie Goldenberg
suggests, ‘a skilful source can build a relationship similar to that
which often exists between resource rich source and beat reporter,
in which the reporter depends on the source for news and, as a
result, the reporter is willing to listen to and act on behalf of the
source’s interests’ (1984, p. 237).
In this sense, the group or source must cultivate dependence,
through generating newsworthiness, which requires an under-
standing of what constitutes newsvalues. Goldenberg argues that
newsworthiness is partly a function of difference, and is increased
‘the more a group’s political goals deviate from prevailing social
norms’ (ibid., p. 234). Collins’s discussion of counter-cultural
religious movements notes how they have frequently gained
‘access to a public voice’ by cultivating and generating controversy
(1992, p. 116). A group’s newsworthiness, and thus access, is also
increased if its goals parallel a currently newsworthy issue, if they
are specific and relatively easy to make sense of for the journalist,
and it can be associated with already-established ‘definers’ and
sources (such as the peace movement’s association with retired
military personnel in the 1980s).
King makes the obvious point that access to the media is strongly
influenced by ‘performance factors’ such as ‘situational credibility,
perceived sincerity, and rhetorical skill in conveying the message’
(1987, p. 10). For groups without the culturally validated authority
of elite sources, access can also be achieved by recourse to forms

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