Page 152 - Communication and Citizenship Journalism and the Public Sphere

THE USE OF NEWS IN ‘COALITION’ GOVERNMENT 141

outside the administrative seats, among the parties which must reach an
agreement before negotiating later in the institutional seat of
Parliament, with factions in the opposition. The traditional closeness
with the media system assures this phase with publicity, in the
‘Habermasian’ sense of the term. This function also applies to the
dynamics between the various components of the same party, each
producing in different forms (statements, press releases, interviews,
meetings, etc.) information picked up, commented on and amplified by
the journalistic system. Thus a political communication is generated and
initially promoted by the political parties and then circulated, amplified
and publicly legitimized by the institutions of the media, because they,
by privileging a communication produced by the parties, decree its
public relevance. We shall return later to the concept of public
relevance.
But what does the function of intermediation and therefore the
negotial use of political communication mean? We can distinguish some
of its aspects: first of all, it means setting up channels of communication
of public relevance between the majority and the opposition, among the
parties in government coalitions and among factions within the same
party. The messages of political communication permit setting up
circuits of communication endowed with public importance and
therefore a certain ‘officialness’ between groups which in some cases,
and particularly at certain times, may not have any. The type of public
communication reported in newspapers and on television becomes a
fact which cannot be ignored, one which cannot be denied without
taking responsibility for the action. It is easy to give examples: all too
often meetings, debates, events and statements are occasions for
political forces to open or reopen dialogues which have never been held
or had been interrupted. Through the channels of political
communication political actors send messages and receive essential
information from other political forces.
A second function performed by political communication is the
definition of issues on which agreements must be reached: the speeches
and statements by individual politicians or parties may often have as their
main, and sometimes only, objective that of calling the attention of the
public and other interlocutors in the political system to the subjects on
which negotiations among political forces should be based. This manner
of presenting the issues is typical of coalition governments, and the
communication of proposals by one of the government’s members
creates the setting for constructing or destroying alliances. An example
is given by the interview granted in February 1987 by the President of