Page 84 - An Introduction to Political Communication Third Edition

THE POLITICAL MEDIA

Ericson et al. suggest that ‘hegemony addresses how super-
ordinates manufacture and sustain support for their dominance
over subordinates through dissemination and reproduction of
knowledge that favours their interests, and how subordinates
alternatively accept or contest their knowledge’ (1991, p. 12). For
these writers, ‘journalists and their news organisations are key
players in hegemonic processes. They do not simply report events,
but participate in them and act as protagonists’ (ibid., p. 16).
The media’s ‘hegemonic’ role, as defined here, may of course
be viewed as wholly benign, if one chooses to accept the self-
legitimating ideology of capitalist societies. From such a perspective
(what some would call the dominant ideological perspective) the
media provide the social structure with an outlet for the expression
of shared values (as well as the political functions of rational
information discussed earlier). If, however, one objects to the
system, or parts of it, the hegemonic role of cultural institutions
such as the media is viewed negatively. For the late Ralph Miliband
the media ‘in all capitalist societies have been consistently and
predominantly agencies of conservative indoctrination’ (1973,
p. 200).
How is this agency realised? The broadcasters’ concept of
impartiality, for example, works to contain political debate within
a more or less tightly drawn consensus, which admits only an
established political class and often marginalises or excludes others.
In coverage of politics, as noted above, impartiality in practice
means giving equal representation (representation proportionate to
an organisation’s electoral support) to the main political parties,
particularly during election campaigns. It does not mean the
reporting of all significant participants in a political debate. In
Northern Ireland, ‘impartiality’ was explicitly withheld from the
para-military organisations and their political wings, because they
operated outside the established democratic procedures of the
United Kingdom’s constitutional system. The broadcasting ban
introduced by the Conservative government in 1989, and removed
only in 1994, prevented television and radio from airing the voices
of some elected Northern Ireland politicians because they were
deemed to support those who challenged the legitimacy of the
British state.
In this case, from the viewpoint of the hegemonic school,
the media were erecting a barrier between legitimate and illegit-
imate political discourse, excluding the latter from the public
sphere.

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