Page 54 - Communication and Citizenship Journalism and the Public Sphere

RETHINKING THE MEDIA AS A PUBLIC SPHERE 43

independent channel of information and discussion, which facilitated
the formation of public opinion and democratic influence on government.
This argument has not gone unchallenged. Some critical studies argue
that broadcasters internalized external political pressure by censoring
themselves, notably in relation to the conflict in Northern Ireland. 33
Attention has also been drawn to the increasing skill and sophistication
with which politicians, and their publicists, manipulated the airwaves. 34
This finds an answering echo in American studies which argue that
presidential elections have become manipulated ‘TV spectacles’ in
which meaningful public participation and political choice has been
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minimized. But in the context of Britain, the fine-tuning of the arts of
TV management should be seen as a belated response by politicians to
their loss of domination over broadcasting rather than an extension of it.
Politicians now have much less control over the agenda and terms of
reference of broadcasting coverage than they did in the 1950s. 36
A second key theme of broadcasting history is that TV and radio helped
to democratize the relationship between government and governed. 37
The TV studio, it is argued, eclipsed parliament as a forum of national
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debate: consequently, politics became a continuous public activity
rather than a closed affair between professional politicians followed
closely only by a politicized elite between elections. Broadcasting also
cultivated from the 1930s onwards a relaxed, ‘domesticated’ style of
discussing politics that made it seem personal and accessible rather than
abstract and technical. A more aggressive style of interviewing
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politicians was also developed in the late 1950s, which symbolically
asserted the accountability of political leaders to the electorate. A more
egalitarian relationship was also promoted by the development of
political satire on TV from the early 1960s onwards.
The rise of broadcasting, like that of the press, is thus portrayed as an
emancipatory force that empowered the people. However, some
historians have embroidered this thesis by inserting a radical thread into
the weave of its whiggish argument. Their central contention is that
broadcasting broadened the social and political basis of popular
representation in Britain because it was organized along public-service
lines.
The policies and views of the Labour Party were more fully
represented on the airwaves than in the press because, it is argued,
broadcasting was subject to a public-service duty to maintain a political
balance. The public-service duty to inform also generated quality news
and current affairs programmes at peak times, which won mass
audiences. This helped to offset the knowledge gap between elites and