Page 246 - An Introduction to Political Communication Third Edition

CONCLUSION

tatives choose to release into the public domain. This is especially
true of international politics, in which citizens may be asked to
endorse and participate in conflict with other countries. Such
conflicts may have justification, or they may not. In deciding which
is true in any given case, we are almost entirely dependent on
information passed through mass media by government and
national security establishments. The degree of accuracy of, and
public access to, this information is itself a matter of (our) national
security. In the matter of governmental information, as was
noted above, New Labour in power has made some significant
progress, enacting freedom of information legislation for the first
time in British history and allowing TV documentary-makers
unprecedented access to the decision-making process of such key
ministers as the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Foreign
Secretary. The ‘fly-on-the-wall’ documentaries transmitted on
British television in the first year of the Labour government, as well
as constituting excellent public relations, offered a valuable insight
into the thinking of politicians and their communication advisers as
they went about their daily business.
Looking beyond the direct control of politicians and their spin
doctors, both Britain and America in the late 1990s saw the power
of the Internet as a liberalising, even destabilising force in political
communication manifest itself. The exposure in 1998 of Bill
Clinton’s ‘problems’ with Monica Lewinsky on the Drudge Report
website, and the Internet-led disclosure of the British Home
Secretary’s son’s embarrassing tangle with marijuana and a tabloid
journalist, were emblematic of the increasing difficulty politicians
face in controlling the spread of information which they would
prefer to remain secret. In both of the above cases one can have
sympathy with the ‘victims’ of Internet exposure, and in the end
neither emerged with serious damage. Bill Clinton was more
popular with the American people after Monicagate than before,
and Jack Straw’s predicament in relation to his son’s youthful
experimentation with an illegal vegetable did not harm his image
as one of the most effective Labour ministers of the first Blair
term. The speed with which the news spread, however, and the
politicians’ inability to prevent its public consumption and
discussion, give grounds for some optimism about the future
development of democracy. It is certain that, as new communication
technologies evolve further, elites in all spheres of public life will
become more exposed to democratic scrutiny through the media,
and that cannot be a bad thing.

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