Media management

I. Read and translate the text.

The relationship between politicians and the media, and more importantly between the government and the media, will obviously involve a struggle between what are apparently two different sets of interests. The journalist is supposed to be attempting to seek out and present the facts, while the politician will want to ensure that a news story reflects the ‘message’ that he or she wishes to convey. There is nothing particularly new in the attempt of the political elites to try to control media representations, as is revealed in various accounts of the development and growth of political public relations from the early years of the twentieth century onwards.

However, this discussion will focus on the role of public relations over the past two decades in Britain, a period which witnessed a rapid transformation in the role and status of public relations within political culture. This expansion of public relations activity has, unsurprisingly, been accompanied by an increasing reliance upon media management strategies. Some commentators have pointed to the increasing use of the ‘soundbite’ and the ‘pseudo-event’as key strategies used by politicians to control media representations of them and their policies.

The ‘news machine’, and particularly the television news, spends an enormous portion of its time focusing on the political sphere, and journalists, like most people with tight deadlines, find it hard to resist if their news gathering task is made easier for them. Cockerell et al. (1984) note that, in reference to the workings of the British

Unit III Media Management

parliament, ‘Very few journalists have had the incentive to dig deeper, to mine the bedrock of power rather than merely scour its topsoil’. It is the broadcast journalists’ ‘job’ to pick out the key details or important points of any political event or speech. If that task is made easier, if the speech contains memorable phrases (soundbites) which summarise the main points, then there is a good chance that these portions of the speech will be selected and broadcast on the few minutes allotted to ‘story’ on the broadcast news bulletins. Tony Blair’s phrase ‘tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime’ from a speech made when he was shadow home secretary has entered the national consciousness. It is indeed a memorable phrase, but it is important to remember that being ‘tough’ and talking about being ‘tough’ was a carefully constructed aspect of the Blair style.

McNair (1994) points out that many political speeches, which increasingly tend to be loaded with soundbites, occur within the context of the ‘pseudo-event’, by which he means the staged rally or the strictly controlled party conference. Obviously this kind of political pseudo-event has a long history from Caesar entering Rome, after another famous military victory, to the Nuremburg rallies in 1930s Germany.

Nevertheless, the impression of a united and adoring audience exulting in the great and powerful leader is memorable and again creates an easy ‘story’ for the few allotted minutes on the television news agenda. In Britain in the 1980s, the Conservative Party, which was in government throughout the decade, increasingly offered this image of a united party behind a strong leader, Margaret Thatcher. Speeches by Thatcher and the Tory hierarchy at their party conferences were largely successful in supplying the television news organisations with ‘easily reportable “bits” of political information’ (McNair 1994) which tended to set the news agenda in the party’s favour. By contrast, during much of the 1980s the Labour party was presented in the media as being in a state of, at best, disarray, at worst, total disintegration.

After its election defeat in 1979, Labour went through a period of internal ‘ideological’ conflict and, at times, damaging splits occurred (several leading members of the party left and formed the Social Democratic Party). Bitter internal conflicts tended to be fought out at party conferences and the Labour Party leadership found it difficult to impose control over events. Media organisations looking for a representative few minutes for the news bulletins tended to reflect this bitter infighting and there was little concerted attempt by the Labour Party leadership to influence the news agenda. The contrast with the Tory Party, during the 1980s, was stark. The perception was that the Tories were united, Labour was divided; the Tories had a strong leader, Labour had a series of weak and ineffectual leaders; the Tories were in control of events, Labour was at the mercy of them, and so on. The tightly controlled and carefully staged party conferences allowed the leadership of the Conservative Party to successfully manage media representations of them for a significant period of time. Behind the scenes the party elite was far from united behind the powerful leader, but it was behind the scenes where the personal and ideological disagreement, and the subsequent bloodletting, occurred. Ministers were frequently sacked for being disloyal,

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that is, disagreeing with Margaret Thatcher. Yet the fact that the media seemed to be caught by surprise by the eventual internal coup d’é tat which ousted Thatcher as party leader, and British prime minister, only reveals how successfully the media had been ‘managed’ for much of her rule.

By the early 1990s the Labour Party led by Neil Kinnock, and under the guidance of political public relations specialists like Peter Mandelson, was attempting to emulate the success of the Tory Party in managing the media and setting news agendas. There were significant failures in their attempts to stage manage media opportunities but, on the whole, the Labour Party’s media managers learned from their mistakes and, for most of the decade, including the general election success of 1997, Labour was very successful at managing the media.

(By Jim R. Macnamara)

II. Read and memorize the following words:

accompany v. – сопровождать, сопутствовать

adore v. – обожать; поклоняться

allot v. – распределить

apparently – очевидно; по-видимому

consciousness - сознательность

convey v. – сообщать, передавать

coup d’é tat - франц. государственный переворот

deadline – срок, последний срок

election – выборы, избрание

ensure v. – гарантировать, обеспечивать

exult v. – торжествовать; ликовать

mercy – милосердие, милость

to be at the mercy - быть в милости

mine v. - подкапываться под кого-либо; подрывать (репутацию)

obviously – очевидно, по-видимому

onwards – далее

pick out v. – отбирать, подбирать

pseudo-event – псевдособытие

rally - объединение

resist v. – сопротивляться; препятствовать

reveal v. – показывать, обнаруживать

seek out v. – разыскивать

soundbite – крепкая острота

stark – полный; абсолютный

topsoil – верхний слой (почвы)