Page 129 - Communication Theory and Research

McQuail(EJC)-3281-08.qxd 8/16/2005 6:32 PM Page 114

114 Communication Theory & Research
the critical Washington-watchers and focused very much on the non-traditional
media format of talk shows and (supposedly uncritical) local media (Rosenstiel,
1993: 83–92).
There are probably examples of such political communication behaviour in
European countries too, but, as far as I know, no systematic research on this topic
exists. Present prime minister Wim Kok applied a bypass strategy in the
Netherlands in 1994 when he sometimes refused to comment on national
televison news on issues brought forward by his opponents, while gladly
attending many a talk show or visiting local television stations. But even when
38 percent of his television appearances were on talk shows, the majority were
still in the informative programmes. Moreover, the realization that most viewers
are to be found watching politicians in the latter programmes and that television
news is considered to be the most trustworthy medium, makes these genres, in
a way, an unavoidable part of the media strategy of political parties.
There is also a paradoxical risk in this strategy, which Blumler (1990) labelled
the ‘modern publicity process’ and which Zaller (1997) has developed into what
he calls the ‘Rule of Product Substitution’: the more effectively reporters are
challenged for control of a news jurisdiction, the more strenuously they will seek
to develop new and distinctive types of information that they can substitute for
what politicians are providing and that affirm overall journalistic control of mass
communication. The reaction to politicians trying to gain control over the
media’s agenda has, in the US at least, resulted in journalists predominantly
evaluating political leaders in a negative way. They use opponents as a means to
undermine each politician’s claim (Patterson, 1994).
Though only based on one example, the irritated journalistic reaction to Wim
Kok’s bypass strategy and attempts to confront him with his opponents might
point to a comparative development in the Netherlands (Brants and Van Praag,
1995: 249ff.). Cappella and Jamieson (1996) and Patterson (1994) have argued
and empirically substantiated that this type of negative and conflict-oriented
reporting has led to public cynicism and declining confidence in the US political
system. If this holds true for European countries as well, it puts both
infotainment as a bypass strategy and the resulting type of political journalism
in a different light.

Infotainment as seduction

More than anything else probably (but usually implicitly), the critique of
infotainment is based on the assumption that if many people are attracted by
personalities and avoid the hard stuff of politics, it is bad for them. They are
seduced by imagery hiding the reality of necessary choices in political matters,
they miss out on the information relevant for political participation, and they
thus might make the wrong or at least an irrational decision at places like the
ballot box, or do not vote at all. These assumptions are based, of course, on a
highly questionable hypodermic needle theory of the workings of mass media;
they define the private and the personal away to the affective domain of the