Is the power of the media in British politics a threat to democracy?

A truly democratic society must have a free and independent media to be considered as such. British people expect the media to be their eyes and ears. In theory, the media must scrutinize government performance and reports what it finds quickly, objectively, and without any attempt to undermine or encourage any viewpoint. The role of the media should be the one of an objective ‘translator’ which informs aiming to serve the public interest. But what is the public interest? Libertarians believe that the role of the media is not to teach but to inform. Others claim that Medias should take part of the political process, that is to say that it should not be merely a reporter but it should have an active role by reflecting the different social concerns. Hence, in practice, broadcasters in the UK approach the media as libertarians, while the press is partisan and focus on different social backgrounds and stratums of the society.
‘The Medias, in the twenty-first century, are in Britain at the height of their powers. The population watches, on average, 28 hours of television a week, and listens to 24 hours of radio a day; in 2003, nearly 35 million people read a daily or Sunday newspaper, 36.5 million read a magazine and nearly 25 million people accessed the internet.’[1]
When this paper refers to media, it means newspapers, television, radio, magazines, internet, cinema, and other electronic means of communication.
Television is the most trusted source of voter information in the UK. Already by 1966 90% of British households had a TV. ‘Television, then, was to become the new terrain on which political battles would be fought, and those who sought to survive in the era of television had to learn how it worked and, more importantly, how to use it.’[2]
Media and politicians coexist and cooperate; the media needs news from the political actors while politicians search for publicity from the mass media to let people know their proposals, priorities and policies. As a consequence of the power the media has developed in the UK, networks of ‘spin-doctors’, communications directors, and political aides have increasingly become commonplace in contemporary British politics. ‘This professionalisation of campaigning, much influenced by campaign activity in the US, is one of the most important recent developments in British elections.’[3]
In the British system, newspapers and magazines, the so-called free press, are not obliged to be impartial on political events, they are free to comment. In contrast, broadcasters, who are ‘obliged to inform’, are subjected to a regulatory regime that has compelled them to remain non-partisan. Thus, there are clear differences between the press and the TV in respect to their reporting of politics. While television is balanced, trusted, reaches a mass and passive audience through an audio-visual message, and is the most important source of information for voters; the national press, which is the secondary source of information, tends to be partisan, less trusted, and it reaches a segmented and active audience through a printed message.

To better analyze the power of the media in British politics and to determine whether it constitutes a threat to democracy, we shall in a first step describe the different regulations the media encounters in Britain. In a second part we shall treat the growing power that mass mediums of communication and media proprietors have developed, and how they can threaten the balance of democracy.


When dealing with the regulations that the British political system has developed in order to frame mass medias we realize that recent laws have been voted by Parliament to counterattack the impressive power media have built up not only in Britain but in every ‘media centered democracy’ around the world.
In 2003, the Broadcasting Act concentrated 6 important regulators in one organism: the Office of Communications. The OFCOM was established as the single regulator for all broadcasting media. ‘Press regulation is a highly sensitive issue in part because the wrong sort of regulation could threaten the freedom of the press to reports on events and people, and press freedom is one of the defining features of democracy.’[4]
Under the organism’s regulation, all broadcasters must aspire to neutrality, follow the rules of impartiality on reporting and must not be marked by partisan bias or political leanings as it is the case of broadcasters in the United States. A licence, delivered for a fixed period of time by the OFCOM, is needed to broadcast in the UK. This constitutes another regulatory way of preventing wrongdoings from broadcasters that could threaten the democratic life of the country by under or over- representing a political lean. In 1997, MORI found that 74 % of British people trusted TV news, especially the BBC to tell the truth while only 15 % trusted the press.[5]
Although damaged by the kind of journalism of suspicion revealed by the Kelly affair; ‘the only broadcasting organization in Britain, and one of the few in the world, which has the resources and the tradition to attempt news whose objectivity is widely recognised, is the BBC.’[6] Several controversies and disputes between government and the independent BBC emerged as a consequent of the Iraq War. Andrew Gilligan’s allegations in the Today programme on Radio Four claiming that the government knowingly misinformed the public in presenting and in ‘sexing up’ its September dossier making the case for war created a sentiment in Blair’s government that the BBC was anti-war. The controversy continued when it was known that Dr David Kelly, a ministry of defence advisor, was Gilligan source and unfortunately finished with the suicide of the scientist.
‘It was certainly true that the corporation did not act as an apologist for the conflict; nor did it serve as a mere transmission belt for governments views; nor did act as a cheerleader for the authorities as Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News did for the Bush administration in the US.’[7]
The necessity of having a publicly funded BBC, directed by a board of twelve independent governors, to keep people well informed tends to be crucial as Medias are private companies which not always look for the public interest but for their own. John Lloyds goes further by affirming that: ‘The market, we can assume on the basis of experience, can do entertainment. It cannot always do citizenship, at least not unaided.’[8]
A number of political scientists claim that the effects of the media on the people are not for granted and for that reason the statement which argues that the growing power of the Medias could threaten democracy ought to be undermine. They base their assumptions on the psychological theory of cognitive dissonance, which explains that an individual tends to ‘filter’ the news he/she watches because people seek reinforcement of their own positions. The theory explains that this is done in 3 ways: by selective exposure (we tend to read and watch material that supports our personal viewpoints), by selective perception (we perceive candidates and politicians according to our preconceptions) and by selective retention (we only tend to remember the things that fit with our views and we quickly forget things that do not. Thus, ‘people employ these mechanisms subconsciously in ‘decoding’ the communications that have been ‘encoded’ by the sender. In doing so they erect a ‘communications barrier’ or ‘perceptual screen’ between themselves and the mass media.’[9]
Therefore, they claim that the question is whether or not watching the news or reading them really affects the electoral inclinations of the voters. They also put forward two pioneering studies on the effects of TV on British voters which supported the filter model of cognitive dissonance (Trenaman and McQuail, 1961; Blumler and McQuail, 1967).
The fact is that we do not have any conclusions of recent studies on this area, and that ‘at that time political television was at its infancy.’[10] Should this theory be right, why do political parties spend colossal sums of money on TV? Researchers have realized through the time that demonstrating the effect the media has got on citizens is really a difficult task.


When treating with the growing power mass mediums of communication and media proprietors have developed during the last two decades and how they can threaten democracy, the first fact that come to the readers mind is that the press is partisan and weakly regulated. Newspapers and magazines are business enterprises, no longer independent but usually regulated by corporations which principally look for an economic profit. ‘Newspapers are preoccupied by the problems of their own declining but competitive market. They have little choice but to become more commercial in outlook, a goal difficult to reconcile with the pursuit of traditional party politics.’[11] As a matter of fact, huge scepticism on the press reliance to inform on political matters exists. This is accentuated by the fact that the only organism regulating the press is the ‘Press Complains Commission’ which is a self-regulatory body controlled by the press industry itself.
The increasingly gigantic power some media proprietors have developed in influencing the society concerns many political scientist, politicians and citizens who are aware of their influence in contemporary politics. For instance, the case of the billionaire Keith Rupert Murdoch, an Australian global media executive, who is the controlling shareholder, chairman and managing director of News Corporation, who own News Interantional and 170 newspapers around the globe. News International Ltd. owns in Britain: The Sun, The Times, The Sunday Times, News of the World and the British Sky Broadcasting Group plc. ‘There was no greater demonstration of the influence of Murdoch’s power than when these (newspapers) and every one of his other 171 newspapers around the world supported the invasion of Iraq regardless of the strength of local not to mention editorial opinion.’[12]
The businessman, who has conservative leanings and has supported Blair since the 1997 elections, is highly active in what is reported in his newspapers and has already fired editors and journalists who defied his policies. On the war in Iraq he declared: ‘the greatest thing to come out of this (the invasion of Iraq) for the world economy...would be $20 a barrel for oil. That's bigger than any tax cut in any country.’[13]
Concerning the war in Iraq, the total circulation of the pro-war newspapers in the UK was 9.4 million, while the circulation of those who opposed the war was 2.7 million. This is not insignificant because according to MORI polling only 26% of the British people supported the invasion until March 2003.
Another fact that can be considered a threat to the democratic life is the undermining of government from the Medias. ‘In 1991, the Times abandoned its coverage of Parliamentary debates on the grounds that they were not read, that they were not newsworthy enough and that they merely reproduced a charade.’[14] This questioning of the relevance and importance of Parliament within the British political life, is an example of the continuously degenerating role of the press which tends to forget their informing role when profit is at a stake. Only by 1999 the Times reintroduced the coverage of the parliamentary page, albeit in a more truncated form.
Britain is probably one of the most euro-sceptic countries within Europe. In the 1999 EU elections, the euro-scepticism and antipathy of the Daily telegraph and The Sun could be understood by the influence of the leader of the Conservative Party William Hague; but it has also emerged the fact that both proprietors of the newspapers were themselves anti-EU political integration and favour stronger ties across the Atlantic (one being naturalised American and the other Canadian). One should not undermine the role politicians play in this scepticism, but it is also difficult to know how great this scepticism would be if the newspapers adopted a more neutral viewpoint.
Politicians have adapted themselves to the growing power of what Americans call the fourth branch of government. ‘By the 1980s, it had become essential for major politicians to employ public relation expertise to help them with the news management.’[15] Thus, as Prime Minister, Blair expanded the public relations state he inherited from Margaret Thatcher and John Major. Such spokesperson, increasingly defined as ‘spin-doctors’ wielded more influence across government than many ministers. That was the case of the near-decade long service of Alastair Campbell who afforded the rare privilege of instructing civil servants. Therefore, it can be argued that: ‘the struggle between politicians and the media is critical because this conflict, which has usually been presented as a healthy clash of independent institutions in a democratic policy, has for some time assumed the character of a zero-sum-game struggle for power.’[16]
One shall also remember that there are Medias that government can not regulate. ‘The growth of satellite-based broadcasting has destroyed the monopoly of governmental-based regulation in Britain.’[17] Moreover, the development of horizontal media trough internet completely transformed the former only-vertical system.







‘The view that journalism can never be objective and thus it must become ‘attached’ or ‘engaged’ or ‘advocating’ is now at the centre of the controversy within the profession.’[18]
It is worth repeating again that it is extremely difficult to isolate the effects of a partisan press as many readers only focus on news on sport coverage, celebrities’ events and so on. But Curtice and Semetko (1994) and Norris et al. (1999) concluded that ‘while newspapers had little influence on voters during the 1992 campaign, they had a small but significant effect over the longer term.’[19] Furthermore, the cognitive dissonance theory can not longer be applied to today’s politics. Since party identification has declined in importance the filter psychological mechanism is discredited. ‘With a dealigned electorate more open to change in the short term, election campaigns and mass media are, potentially, more likely to influence voters and elections outcomes.’[20]The reader gains the impression that the press might benefice from state regulation comparable to the OFCOM. The press could win reliability and thus could increase their sells and income.
In January 2004, the publication of the Hutton report absolving the government of altering the dossier severely discredited the BBC. The resignation of the chairman of the BBC board of governors, the director general and the journalist Andrew Gilligan represented a clear message to the British people that the corporation was independent and was not going to surrender to governmental pressures.
Although Media trivialises the political life, it sets the agenda, and it disencourage the face-to face debate; it is essential to promote and keep democracy. As the Phillis report argued in late 2003, there has been a breakdown in trust between politicians and government, the public and the media. This turns to be dangerous for democracy as voters disengage from the electoral and democratic process.
This essay has demonstrated that it would be exaggerated to claim that the actual power of the mass media in British politics is a threat to democracy. But it would also be demagogic to claim that the growing powers of media-owners and media corporations do not constitute a danger. We all agree that extreme concentration of political power in one individual leads to dictatorship; extreme concentration of Medias in one corporation could also endanger democracy. This concentration is not the current situation of the British Medias, but politicians should vote new laws to prevent such concentration to develop.











BIBLIOGRAPHY

MORAN, Michael: Politics and Governance in the UK, Palgrave, 2005. Chapter 16: How Political Communication Happens.

FISHER, Justin; DENVER, David and BENYON, John: Central Debates in British Politics, Longman, 2003. Chapter 12 Ralph Negrine: The Media and Politics.

DUNLEAVY, Patrick, el al.: Developments in British Politics 8, Palgrave, 2006. Chapter 13 Dominic Wring: The News Media and the Public Relations State.

SELDON, Anthony and KAVANAGH Dennis (eds): The Blair Effect 2001-5, Cambridge University Press, 2005. Chapter 5 Raymond Kuhn: Media Management.

LLOYD, John: What the Media are doing to our Politics, Constable and Robinson, 2004. Introduction (pp. 1-26) and Chapter 3: Greater than Any of Them.

RUSH, Michael and GIDDINGS, Philip (eds): The Palgrave Review of British politics 2005, Palgrave 2006. Chapter 16 Dominic Wring: Politics and the Media: Intra- and Inter-Parties Debates.

DENVER, David: Elections and Voters in Britain, Palgrave, 2003. Chapter 6: Campaigning and the Mass Media.

KAVANAGH, Dennis and BUTLER, David: The British General Election 2005, Palgrave 2005. Chapter 9 Margaret Scammell and Martin Harrop: The Press: Still for Labour Despite Blair.

Website:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,897015,00.html

[1] LLOYD, John: What the Media are doing to our Politics, Constable and Robinson, 2004. Introduction (pp. 1-26) and Chapter 3: Greater than Any of Them. P. 9.
[2] FISHER, Justin; DENVER, David and BENYON, John: Central Debates in British Politics, Longman, 2003. Chapter 12 Ralph Negrine: The Media and Politics. P. 188.
[3] DENVER, David: Elections and Voters in Britain, Palgrave, 2003. Chapter 6: Campaigning and the Mass Media. P. 127.

[4] MORAN, Michael: Politics and Governance in the UK, Palgrave, 2005. Chapter 16: How Political Communication Happens. P.356
[5] DENVER, David: Elections and Voters in Britain, Palgrave, 2003. Chapter 6: Campaigning and the Mass Media. P.131.
[6] LLOYD, John: What the Media are doing to our Politics, Constable and Robinson, 2004. Introduction (pp. 1-26) and Chapter 3: Greater than Any of Them. P. 178
[7] SELDON, Anthony and KAVANAGH Dennis (eds): The Blair Effect 2001-5, Cambridge University Press, 2005. Chapter 5 Raymond Kuhn: Media Management. P.101
[8] LLOYD, John: What the Media are doing to our Politics, Constable and Robinson, 2004. Introduction (pp. 1-26) and Chapter 3: Greater than Any of Them. P. 143.
[9] DENVER, David: Elections and Voters in Britain, Palgrave, 2003. Chapter 6: Campaigning and the Mass Media. P.134
[10] DENVER, David: Elections and Voters in Britain, Palgrave, 2003. Chapter 6: Campaigning and the Mass Media. P.135
[11] KAVANAGH, Dennis and BUTLER, David: The British General Election 2005, Palgrave 2005. Chapter 9 Margaret Scammell and Martin Harrop: The Press: Still for Labour despite Blair. P.144
[12] Greenslade, 2003 in DUNLEAVY, Patrick, el al.: Developments in British Politics 8, Palgrave, 2006. Chapter 13 Dominic Wring: The News Media and the Public Relations State. P. 248.
[13] http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,897015,00.html. Paragraph 4.
[14] FISHER, Justin; DENVER, David and BENYON, John: Central Debates in British Politics, Longman, 2003. Chapter 12 Ralph Negrine: The Media and Politics. P. 192.
[15] DUNLEAVY, Patrick, el al.: Developments in British Politics 8, Palgrave, 2006. Chapter 13 Dominic Wring: The News Media and the Public Relations State. P. 232
[16] LLOYD, John: What the Media are doing to our Politics, Constable and Robinson, 2004. Chapter 3: Greater than Any of Them. P.12
[17] MORAN, Michael: Politics and Governance in the UK, Palgrave, 2005. Chapter 16: How Political Communication Happens. P. 360.
[18] LLOYD, John: What the Media are doing to our Politics, Constable and Robinson, 2004. Chapter 3: Greater than Any of Them. P.181
[19] DENVER, David: Elections and Voters in Britain, Palgrave, 2003. Chapter 6: Campaigning and the Mass Media. P.142.
[20] DENVER, David: Elections and Voters in Britain, Palgrave, 2003. Chapter 6: Campaigning and the Mass Media. P.151.