Page 245 - An Introduction to Political Communication Third Edition

COMMUNICATING POLITICS

sport, it is nevertheless one in which citizens have real power to
decide outcomes. Politicians employ a wide array of manipulative
communication-management techniques but, as we have seen, these
are subject to mediation, comment and interpretation by the meta-
discourse of political journalism, to which voters are relentlessly
exposed. Politics in the age of mediation may have the character
of a complex game, but it is one which media commentators and
citizens alike have become increasingly adept at playing.
There are, however, important qualifications which must be made
to the optimists’ arguments. Most obviously, access to the resources
required for effective political communication is neither universal
nor equitable. The design, production and transmission of political
messages costs money. In a capitalist system, this simple fact
inevitably favours the parties and organisations of big business.
Who could state with confidence that the dramatic electoral success
of Berlusconi’s Forza Italia movement owed nothing to his control
of so much of the Italian media system? Chapter 8 argued strongly
that innovation and skill in the techniques of media management
can partially offset this resource imbalance for marginal political
organisations but, to the extent that good political communication
can influence citizens’ attitudes and behaviour, economic power
translates into political power.
For that reason, it is crucial to the health of the democratic
process that the financing of political communication be monitored
and regulated, just as certain restrictions on the ownership and
cross-ownership of media organisations are insisted upon in most
liberal democracies. It should not be possible, now or in the multi-
channel, relatively unregulated media system of the future, for the
political representatives of big capital to monopolise communi-
cation channels or to bribe their way to communicative advantage.
If the optimistic perspective described above is to have validity,
there must be a ‘level playing field’ for all those competing in the
game.
Another weakness of the optimists’ perspective is the continuing
existence of secrecy and manipulation in the sphere of government
communication. We discussed in Chapter 7 how the government
of Margaret Thatcher, like others before and since throughout the
capitalist world, was accused of cynically using the information
apparatus at its disposal to further its own, limited political
objectives. As communication becomes still more important in the
political process, it becomes essential for citizens to have some
power and control over which information their elected represen-

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