Page 154 - Communication and Citizenship Journalism and the Public Sphere

THE USE OF NEWS IN ‘COALITION’ GOVERNMENT 143

Democrat Party, intervened at different times in negotiating the choice
of the future Secretary with interviews released by Sabato, a periodical
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published by ‘Comunione e Liberazione’. This choice was not casual:
he probably wanted to notify Christian Democrat leaders that he could
count on the support of ‘Comunione e Liberazione’, which controls an
important area of the Catholic world with numerous votes within the
Party, and could therefore determine significantly the outcome of the
coming Convention.
Finally, there is one last negotial function of political
communication: to launch messages to test the reactions of adversaries
or allies. Again the last Christian Democrat Convention offers
significant cases: at the end of the Neapolitan Convention of the Party,
journalists spoke about an agreement on the future Secretary of the
Party between the retiring Secretary, De Mita, and Scotti, one of the
leaders of the Christian Democrat Party in Naples. The news, which
was almost certainly groundless, was launched by De Mita’s entourage
to test the reactions of the Party’s opposing factions to a possible
agreement between the two leaders.
This intense and articulate debate, usual in Italian political life, is
carried out almost exclusively in the newspapers, magazines and on
television. The media, therefore, provide the different political groups
with places and occasions for communication and perform a function of
intermediation. The complexity of the coalition system along with a
complex party system entail a long process of continuous negotiation
and renegotiation of agreements. Often there is no room for this process
in institutional seats because the agreements precede access to these
seats by the political forces involved. The mass media system, which
works, as we have seen, according to principles, routines, professional
models and linguistics not far from those applied in politics, offers
instead an opportunity for the political process to be carried out, and
indeed in a public arena which, in a certain way, states its importance,
official nature and public relevance, also putting into effect mechanisms
of sanction.
Here we touch on a rather important problem. Most members of the
Italian press and television news services are not capable of representing
issues independently nor are they equipped with the credibility or
authority which are necessary for influencing citizens’ attitudes and
behaviour. There is, moreover, a different public opinion stimulated by
what may be defined as an ‘elite’ press which has rapidly and
effectively developed in recent years and exercises a not unimportant
power of defining what is relevant for public debate and sanction: we