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TELEVISION NEWS AND THE SOCIAL CONTRACT 131

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called a ‘relationship of complicity’ with audiences. The central argument of
Pateman’s study leads him to suggest that the phrase ‘television coverage of an
election’ is a misleading one. Television, he argues, can only be said to provide
‘coverage of’ an election, or any other political event for that matter, if it has an
existence independent of it. For him the evidence of television’s increased
penetration of election campaigning suggests that such independence has
withered away; ‘we do not have television coverage of an election: we have a
television election’. 3
From this perspective, television journalism is not seen as taking over and
con ferring authority on definitions of political situations that are initially
formulated elsewhere. Rather, it is seen as creating these definitions itself. In
Pateman’s study, as in others which hold this position, television is said,
however, to mediate political events. But if we accept that television does play a
mediating role, we must also accept that political events are distinct from the
television events—programmes of particular kinds—which selectively represent
them. The two events are certainly related: the latter consist of illustrated stories
about the former. But they are not identical, nor can the television be said to
have displaced politics—it signifies it in specific ways. The agenda of political
issues, what I have called the ‘primary definitions’ at a given moment in time, is
not constituted by broadcasters but rather by contending political forces and by
economic forces that have pertinent effects for the conduct of the dominant
parliamentary political practices. Television journalism takes its lead from
political forces, the dominant ones at any rate. The process of journalistic story-
telling, which will be referred to here as a process of informed speculation,
represents and then attempts to generalize definitions which already dominate
the political sphere.
Like others, Pateman’s study is important in that it gives due weight to the
specific, formal properties of this process, especially those by which
generalization is attempted. He draws attention, for example, to the use of
‘inflexible formats and ritual repetitions’, generalizing definitions, and to a
variety of other ‘attention-holding devices’. The nature of such devices and their
application stems largely from the taken-for-granted and therefore generally
unquestioned sense of what constitutes ‘good’, ‘telegenic’ material and ‘good’,
‘attractive’ presentation—in short, from professional ‘know-how’. Assessments
of what makes for an attractive presentation of issues—that is, one which will
win and hold the attention of an audience—are, ultimately, based upon the
assumption about audiences, their interests and attitudes, which are held by
professional broadcasters. The deployment of these ‘attention-holding’ devices
has consequences for the way in which political issues and their primary
definition by leading protagonists are made to appear on television. They are
transformed in particular ways.
One consequence of the different ways in which particular programmes make
their appeal to audiences is that not all the issues that are selected and presented
by news bulletins subsequently become items in current affairs programmes. Nor