Page 92 - An Introduction to Political Communication Third Edition

THE POLITICAL MEDIA

– and using this knowledge to present journalists with information
in a way most likely to be accepted and turned into news. As
Tiffen notes, news production ‘generates patterns of [journalistic]
responsiveness which political leaders [and political actors in
general] can exploit’ (1989, p. 74).
Skilled politicians have been manipulating the media in this
fashion for decades, as Daniel Boorstin’s 1962 discussion of the
‘pseudo-event’ makes clear, but there are undoubtedly greater
opportunities to do so in an era when the news space to be filled has
expanded so dramatically. The astute politician will know, for
example, that in a situation where media organisations have finite
resources of time and money, where deadlines are tight and
exclusives increasingly important, there is much to be gained by
ensuring the journalists’ ease of supply, providing, as Schlesinger
and Tumber put it, an ‘information subsidy’ (1994).
A media event which is timed to meet the deadlines for first
editions or prime-time news bulletins will have more likelihood of
being reported than one which is not. An event which provides
opportunities for interesting pictures and, in the case of broad-
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casting, sounds (‘soundbites’), will be more attractive to the news
organisation under pressure than one which does not. Issues which
can be neatly packaged and told in relatively simple, dramatic terms
will receive more coverage than those which are complex and
intractable.
The process of media production, then, is one which can be
studied, understood and manipulated by those who wish to gain
access – on favourable terms, of course. It so happens that those
political actors with the greatest resource base from which to
pursue such a strategy are those located in established institutions
of power, such as governmental and state organisations. They
have the most money with which to employ the best news
managers, organise the grandest events and produce the slickest
press releases.

THE PROFESSION OF JOURNALISM

Another element of the media production process which can be seen
to favour the establishment is the professional ethic of objectivity
itself (and its close relation, impartiality) to which the majority of
political journalists subscribe. Objectivity, as we noted above, is
important to the democratic process because it permits the media

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