Page 85 - An Introduction to Political Communication Third Edition

POLITICS IN THE AGE OF MEDIATION

The media also contribute to the maintenance of consent, it is
argued, by reporting problematic events and processes in ways
favourable to the established order. Major industrial disputes, over-
seas military expeditions (we exclude here wars of national survival,
such as the Second World War) and domestic opposition to key
military policies, are examples of issues which tend to be reported
from an establishment perspective, thus arguably influencing the
political environment in a particular direction. Chomsky and
Herman’s Manufacturing Consent makes explicit reference to this
process in its title, analysing how the American media, over many
decades, have presented their audiences with a view of the world
and its conflicts which corresponds closely to the interests of the
US military-industrial complex (1988). Third World liberation
struggles were reported as ‘communist aggression’; attempts to
restrain economic exploitation of the Third World by US companies
as ‘threats to US interests’; and vicious repression in East Timor,
Chile and elsewhere as legitimate and anti-subversive activity, if
not ignored entirely. The wealth of data and illustrative material
presented in Chomsky and Herman’s work comprises no less than
a post-Second World War history of the US media’s hegemonic
role.
No comparable volume of analysis is available for the British
case, but a number of studies claim to have found similar patterns
of coverage (Glasgow University Media Group, 1985; McNair,
1988). The British media, like those of other capitalist democracies,
have frequently functioned to police the parameters of legitimate
dissent, presenting citizens with a view of the world consistent with
the maintenance of the status quo. They do so for a variety of
reasons. In some cases, the political demands of proprietors are
important (as is apparent with the Murdoch newspapers). In broad-
casting and the press, structural dependence on official sources
frequently allows an official view of events to prevail. British
broadcasting is part of an established culture of shared values and
ideological assumptions, which inform the construction of news.
All these factors have been advanced as reasons for the deep pro-
systemic bias of the media.
The hegemonic model has itself been criticised, however, for its
overly simplistic reading of how the media reports politics. Daniel
Hallin’s study of the Vietnam War showed, on the one hand, that
coverage in the initial phase of the conflict was consistent with a
‘hegemonic’ role for the media, but that as consensus around US
policy in the conflict fragmented in the late 1960s and early 1970s,

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