Page 157 - Culture Media Language Working Papers in Cultural Studies

146 MEDIA STUDIES

Others are referred to only as a collective—‘the militants’ motion…’. Not only
are they presented without credentials but their representativeness is either
heavily qualified or denied. Those opposing the policy of wage restraint within
the Parliamentary Labour Party were presented as a localized grouping, as ‘the
left wing of the Labour Party’. In the coverage of the Scottish TUC Conference
the Scottish TUC was not only localized but also presented as having ‘no real
significance in the decision-making process’.
It is principally the verbal discourse which accomplishes the classification of
activists, a classification which separates out the legitimate and acceptable
activists from the illegitimate and unacceptable. As we have already suggested,
these classifications are the effects of the adoption of a certain political
perspective: that is, a certain way of understanding already given political
positions. Any classification of positions is possible only on the condition that a
system of classification already exists. The system of classification by which
television news identified and placed the forces involved in the economic
struggles of the last few years did not spring uniquely from the broadcasters’
professional ‘know-how’. Nor did it emerge ‘from the outside’, a wholly
independent perspective. It is, rather, the reproduction of a system of
classification already ingrained in the institutional procedures for the
management of the clash of opposing activists.
The perspective adopted by the news bulletins was, as we have said, that of the
Government and the TUC in as much as they were its principal advocates. The
adoption and reproduction of this perspective did not result, however, from a
conspiracy between broadcasting, the state and the hegemonic organs of civil
society, such as the TUC. Television journalists do not have to be explicitly
instructed, as a rule, in how to classify appropriately the protagonists of a given
situation and the positions they advance. As we have seen, the Government’s
interpretation of the causes of inflation was accepted without question. It was a
premise of the coverage, and the proposed solution, wage restraint or the
lowering of ‘real’ wages, was thus made to appear a ‘natural’ consequence. Only
the opposed interpretations were questioned and made to appear ‘unreasonable’,
the product of ‘militant’ self-interestedness. In part, the unqualified acceptance
of the Government’s logic proceeded from its status as the ‘elected
representatives of the people’. But this is not a sufficient condition; the
Government’s handling of inflation was questioned and probed, especially in the
current affairs programmes, though not in a fundamental way. Its position was
accepted, principally, because the broadcasters shared its logic. For both
broadcasters and the Government it seemed ‘obvious’ that the prices of
commodities are determined or regulated by wages. It was the acceptance of this
‘antiquated fallacy’ which placed the broadcasters, the Government and the TUC
on the same side.