Page 252 - An Introduction to Political Communication Third Edition

NOTES

within classes, and what he terms ‘social categories’, such as intellectuals
and bureaucrats, members of which may belong to several different
social classes.
2 Business organisations, of course, use pubic relations techniques to
influence the political environment in more general ways, particularly if,
as is the case with the nuclear power industry, the product is politically
controversial (Dionisopoulos, 1986; Tilson, 1994). For a detailed
discussion of the use of source strategies in industrial relations in 1990s
Britain see Negrine, 1996.
3 This argument was used in Britain by ITN’s Alistair Burnett, when
questioned by a critical viewer as to the reasons for the relative
invisibility of CND on that organisation’s bulletins (McNair, 1988).
4 In his letter dated 29 July 1985, then Home Secretary Leon Brittan
stated: ‘Recent events elsewhere in the world have confirmed only too
clearly what has long been understood in this country. That terrorism
thrives on the oxygen of publicity. That publicity derives either from
the successful carrying out of terrorist acts or, as a second best, from the
intimidation of the innocent public and the bolstering of faltering
supporters by the well-publicised espousal of violence as a justifiable
means of securing political ends’ (quoted in Bolton, 1990, p. 161).

9 INTERNATIONAL POLITICAL COMMUNICATION
1 Michael Parenti notes that the ‘Red-baiting’ of left-wing political
movements has been a feature of the Western media since the nineteenth
century, but that its frequency and intensity increased after the Bolshevik
revolution. For him, the ‘Red Peril theme’ played a major part through-
out the twentieth century in ‘1) setting back and limiting the struggles
and gains of labour; 2) distracting popular attention from the recessions
and crises of capitalism by directing grievances towards interior or alien
forces; and 3) marshalling public support for huge military budgets,
Cold War policies and Third World interventions to make the world safe
for corporate investments and profits’ (1986, p. 126).
2 For examples of pro-Soviet propaganda produced in Britain during the
Second World War, see the documentary Comrades in Arms (Channel 4,
1988).
3 T. Grundy, ‘Mugabe Hires PR Company’, Sunday Herald, 20 May 2001.
4 Newsnight, BBC2, 3 May 1982.
5 This programme gave voice to critics of government policy from the
military and the Tory back-benches, leading to the accusation that it was
an ‘odious and subversive travesty’ (Sally Oppenheim, MP, quoted in the
Glasgow University Media Group, 1985, p. 14).
6 For a documentary account of these events see To Sell a War, broadcast
as part of ITV’s current affairs strand on 6 February 1992.

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