Political Journalism

New Challenges, New Practices

Raymond Kuhn, Erik Neveu

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2003
• ISBN:
  9781134515370
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Political Journalism explores practices of political journalism, ranging from American 'civic journalism' to the press corps covering the European Union in Brussels, from Bangkok newsrooms to French and Italian scandal hunters. Challenging both the 'mediamalaise' thesis and the notion of the journalist as the faithful servant of democracy, it explores political journalism in the making and maps the opportunities and threats encountered by political journalism in the contemporary sphere.

1 Political journalism

Mapping the terrain

Erik Neveu and Raymond Kuhn

One of the most famous paintings by Magritte is that of a pipe painted over the artist's usual blue sky and clouds with a caption which says: ‘Ceci n'est pas une pipe’ [‘This is not a pipe’]. Dare we begin with a similar statement – ‘this is not just another book on political communication’? Of course, political journalism belongs to the realm of political communication, just as Magritte's flying pipe belongs to a smoker. Our statement does not express a love or abuse of paradoxes, but rather has the aim of challenging the effects of analytical routines on the approach to the study of political journalism by political communication researchers. These routines include the customary focus on the role of journalists during election campaigns as opposed to the periods between elections, the view of journalists as condemned to an endless and hopeless defensive struggle against spin-doctors, and the much greater attention paid to interactions between journalists and politicians rather than to those which develop inside the newsroom itself. The effect of such research routines is often to divert the attention of the researcher away from highly visible dimensions of the object of study. So in answer to our own question we can say, ‘this is not just one more book on political communication’. Instead, this book uses the subject of political journalism as a starting point to improve our knowledge of the visible and the unseen in the functioning of the public sphere and the political communication environment.

Putting political journalism at the heart of the political communication process

Towards a re-evaluation of journalism in political communication studies?

Political communication has in recent years been a remarkably prolific research field for political scientists and media researchers. Just to read the articles and books published on this topic since the 1960s would in itself be a full-time job for a newcomer. At the risk of over-simplifying the richness of this scientific literature, one of the basic objectives of this book is to question a kind of routinised ‘casting’ of political communication actors. Much of the research to date has emphasised the professionalisation of communication by political actors, both in terms of personal skills and organisational strategy. Another line of research has been devoted, with a strange blend of fascination and repulsion, to the important role assumed by communication consultants and spin-doctors, who are often presented as a new breed of string-pullers. A third area of inquiry has focused on the role of the demos, whether in its noble political incarnation as ‘public opinion’, or in its more common and commercial form as ‘audiences’. In both cases the public is regarded as having a powerful influence on journalism.

These lines of research have produced a rich legacy of results and analysis. However, they often ascribe to political journalists a strange role in the political communication castlist. From one perspective journalists are frequently presented as trapped between the quest for audiences and the weight of public opinion on the one hand and the powerful influence of professionalised political sources on the other (Schlesinger 1990). Journalists thus appear as victims, condemned to purely reactive strategies in the face of a combination of forces which are shrinking their professional and intellectual autonomy. From another viewpoint, much research output portrays journalists as the villains of modern political communication (Fallows 1996), or at least as being responsible for an approach to coverage which threatens democratic ideals and weakens the public's interest in politics (Entman 1989).

These rather simplistic visions have recently been challenged by new axes of research on political journalism in several countries, including Germany, France, the UK and the USA. The recent launch in Britain of two journals dedicated to the study of journalism – Journalism and Journalism Studies – is another symbol of a renewed interest in the study of journalism. Aside from their different theoretical perspectives, all the contributors to this book are participating in this move towards a re-evaluation of the role and status of journalists in the political communication process. Journalists can and do develop proactive strategies in their relationship with audiences and political sources. They are neither the powerless victims of the professionalisation of politics, nor passive cogs in a communications machine. Their contribution to political communication needs to be reassessed in a ‘relational’ framework which seeks to make sense of the overall power balance between journalists, politicians, spin-doctors and media owners among others. As the sociologist Norbert Elias suggests, to think about complex systems of social interdependencies in a ‘relational’ framework means both to pay attention to all relevant actors and to remember that most of the time the final result of social interaction – in our case a news bulletin or the political news section of a daily paper – is rarely controlled by only one of the actors in the network.

The theoretical choice of re-evaluating the role of political journalists takes us towards new paradoxes. As any bibliographical investigation shows, no other kind of journalism has been the subject of so much research. Yet at the same time this vast literature contains surprising blind spots, for example with regard to comparative and historical approaches. Three points can be made in this context. First, there is a lack of long-term historical analyses. While there are some remarkable studies on journalism in the 1900s or 1960s, there are few books which – like Chalaby's (1998) – provide a broad perspective on the development of political journalism over time. Second, there has been little research focusing on the particuliarities of political journalism in relation to other specialist output, such as sports, social or crime coverage. Finally, there are relatively few studies which analyse the nature of the questions covered in the ‘Politics’ section of the media. Many studies have emphasised the trend in political news towards a growing personalisation of coverage, as well as the inexorable shift away from parliamentary reporting towards using the executive or party headquarters as the main source of political information (Negrine 1996). Few studies, however, offer an historical analysis of the changes in the content of the political pages of newspapers, documenting the possible move away from the fixed boundaries between political journalism and other news sections.

The first and last chapters of this book aim to offer some significant pointers to these questions. In Chapter 2 Neveu develops an historical approach expressed in terms of four ‘generations’ of political journalism since the late eighteenth century. Following the era of publicists came the age of objective political journalists and then a period of ‘critical expertise’. Speculating about the possible emergence of a fourth generation of political journalists from the 1990s onwards, Neveu argues that changes in the media environment and communication process are not simply incremental. Political journalism today faces challenges and changes which are sufficiently dramatic to require an in-depth redefinition of its role, skills and formats.

In Chapter 12 Tunstall concludes the book with a stimulating set of questions on current trends in political journalism in a globalised media landscape. One of the most interesting aspects of this chapter is his emphasis on the need to move from a purely national vision of political journalism towards a greater awareness of the ‘Russian dolls’ structure of political news, which runs the gamut from world news to local reports, embracing the intermediary levels of world-regional, national and national-regional. This new framework suggests the existence of dark corners and blind spots in political news, as shown, for example, in much national coverage of ‘European’ news. Most ‘good stories’ in the media are based on national events, yet important stories are increasingly supranational in scope. In pointing to the existence of a multi-levelled political journalism, Tunstall also invites us to make linkages between approaches which in the past have too often been developed in distinct sub-fields of academic research – for example, news as reports of political events and news as the expression of a geopolitics of media companies. What is at stake in producing reports and narratives of the ‘filo pastry’ of the different levels of polities and politics appears then as a weapon in the balance of power between cultures, states and world regions. Beyond the process of news globalisation and ‘glocalisation’, one can identify struggles for influence. News agencies and international media companies such as CNN or the Financial Times offer news, but they also act as definers of an international agenda, working to the international definition and maintenance of representations of nations, leaders and policy stakes. Tunstall's contribution is basically an invitation to question and perhaps to say farewell to the nation-centric vision of what constitutes political information.

Let us mention one last paradox. Researchers studying political journalism and communication usually agree on the Weberian principle of ‘axiological neutrality’. They practise it too. Nevertheless, one might ask if academics do not face a challenge in this respect very similar to that faced by journalists. To put it another way, is the absence of political commitment sufficient to guarantee a reasonable sense of distance when analysing the role of political communication actors? We would argue that as academics we frequently share an invisible agreement with journalists and even politicians about a ‘legitimist’ vision of politics. Coined by Bourdieu and Passeron (1964), this notion of symbolic or cultural legitimacy refers to the existence of institutionalised representations structured around opposing dualisms – the noble and the common, highbrow and lowbrow, what is political and what is not. The peculiarity of these ‘legitimate’ visions of the social is to transform hierarchies and classifications which are the products of history and power balances into natural, indisputable evidence. Symbolic domination is precisely based on such misunderstandings. It works as a kind of social magic where important questions can only be those asked by important people – a search for the common wealth led by the wealthy.

How and why do these remarks apply to academics studying political journalism? Quite simply. Scholars of political communication usually share, for academic and/or biographical reasons, a strong interest in politics which they may consider as normal and universal behaviour. Lacroix (1984) speaks humorously of ‘polit-ism’ as a professional disease of political scientists, who are too easily disposed to imagine, more or less consciously, that everyone else shares their interest in and knowledge of politics. Like many journalists and elected representatives, academics are prone to share a normative vision of political debate, inherited from the Enlightenment, as a rational exchange of ideas. They tend to limit the realm of politics to parties and elections, paying less attention to other issues and actors such as policies, social movements and lobbying. Another expression of this ‘legitimism’ is a strong tendency to consider that a golden age of politics existed in the past, as is suggested in the use of concepts such as ‘tabloidisation’ or ‘trivialisation’ where description and judgement melt together.¹

These gaps threaten research with several biases. As McNair suggests (Chapter 10), they may lead researchers to adopt reluctant attitudes in the face of any change in the formats of political journalism targeting large or popular audiences. The identification of politics with the core of representative institutions may also explain the fact that so much research focuses on moments of intense mobilisation such as election campaigns and political crises. The frequent adherence to a ‘legitimate’ definition of politics does not help researchers to pay sufficient attention to the renewal in the coverage of political issues which can develop in other news sections and in the contributions of journalists other than those explicitly dedicated to politics.

Political journalism revisited

The scientific logic of the ECPR workshop that gave birth to this book may become clearer from now on.² Beyond the range of their subject matter and their different theoretical perspectives, all the contributors to this book share a common project which can be expressed in terms of four choices and three questions.

First, their approach places journalism and journalists back at the core of the political communication process. To talk in terms of ‘core’ does not imply an a priori assessment of either the role or power of journalists. It simply means that nearly all the chapters focus on the work, strategies and behaviour of journalists. This first choice implies a second. Our common concern is with the ordinary functioning of the political newsdesk, with the making of political journalism in its ‘ordinary’ moments rather than during the feverish periods of election campaign and political crisis. As McCargo (Chapter 5) suggests, there is much to learn and understand by paying attention to questions which may seem terribly trite and un-theoretical such as ‘Who pays the bill?’ when a political journalist has lunch with an MP. A third choice common to all contributors is visible in their desire to make sense of the network of power relationships in which journalists are embedded. However, going back to an approach where attention is focused on political journalists does not mean falling into a new version of the media-centric trap. Instead, to think of political journalism ‘in the making’ means paying considerable attention to the web of complex relationships journalists have with, for example, sources, colleagues, owners, advertisers and audiences. We might add that a final common feature of the different contributions is their focus more on the press than on the broadcasting and electronic media. This particularity is not the result of a deliberate choice or research programme. Rather it reflects our common desire to highlight the less explored dimensions of political journalism, as the balance of research tends to shift more and more towards broadcasting and new media forms.

The book is organised in three main parts, each of which concentrates on addressing a specific question. Part I explores through four case-studies the complex issue of the nature and balances of the interdependencies in which journalists operate. Part II addresses the question of the ‘cynical’ coverage of politics. Why are stories about scandal and sleaze such a dominant feature of political news? Can such a development be considered as the explanation for a cynical or disenchanted relationship to politics by citizens? These questions lead logically to Part III, which centres on the current debate about the impact of political journalism on contemporary democracies. Researchers often speak of a ‘crisis’ of political journalism and communication. They identify new generations, new ‘ages’ and new trends. How can one make sense, without oversimplifying, of the possible consequences of these changes for representative democracy? These are the overarching questions discussed in this book. The answers to them are provided in a schematic overview in the following two sections of this chapter.

Political journalism as the strategic management of interdependencies

Which interdependencies?

In a much quoted sentence, Durkheim wrote in The Rules of Sociological Method that ‘One must consider social facts as things’. Commenting on this aphorism, Bourdieu suggests that one should first consider social facts as ‘relationships’. While most of the contributors to this book are not addicts of French sociology, they would doubtless agree with Bourdieu's adaptation. Political journalists do not live in a social vacuum; they operate in a web of interdependencies – a term which fits our analytic framework better than the more frequently used concept of interaction. While the latter may lead to an overemphasis on the freedom of manoeuvre of the relevant actors, the notion of interdependency incorporates the idea of dependence and so foregrounds the notion of power balances as an objective reality limiting their autonomy.

Some dimensions of this web can be highlighted here. The most visible is the relationship of journalists with politicians. The forms that this relationship takes can cover a whole spectrum of possibilities from the Italian version of ‘political parallelism’ between parties and media to the institutionalisation of objective standards of reporting. Beyond the nature of the positioning of journalists, from commitment to distance or adversarial attitudes, one should also investigate the possible forms of pressure and influence. These can follow a short loop when parties or politicians control or own media organisations or outlets or where public media are under de facto political influence. However, as Kuhn notes (Chapter 3), in most Western democracies the relationship between politicians and journalists is mediated and professionalised by the activity of spin-doctors and the ability of political sources to anticipate the needs and formats of journalists. The partners of political journalists are also basically journalists, ‘competitor-colleagues’ to quote the useful oxymoron of Tunstall (1971). Journalists may work as a pack, valuing co-operation as they cross-check their notes after an interview. They also face situations of competition, both generally between broadcasting and the press and more particularly among newspaper titles and television channels. Even within the same newsroom, both conflict and co-operation are ever present, especially when political journalists must compete with colleagues from other newsbeats in claiming the right to cover events which may be difficult to pigeonhole in an institutionalised news section – as in the case of which journalists were best qualified and most appropriate to cover the BSE issue. To refer once again to Tunstall's classic study, journalists are also both producers of information and paid workers of a media company. Within the confines of their work-place they must engage in another relationship – this time hierarchical – with management. The trend in this context is clearly driven by commercial pressures to maximise ratings and circulation figures.

This relationship in turn introduces the mediated presence of another actor: the audience/public opinion. Considered from either a commercial or political logic, the situation of the public is paradoxical. They are a powerful actor, whose judgements can be mobilised by journalists to criticise or even damage politicians. In addition, audience ratings and circulation figures can be used by media management to push journalists in the direction of more audience-friendly coverage. Yet, at the same time, the mighty public is a...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of illustrations
• Notes on contributors
• Series editor’s preface
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Political journalism Mapping the terrain
• 2 Four generations of political journalism
• Part I The cross-management of the interdependencies between journalists and politicians
• Part II Towards a cynical coverage of politics?
• Part III Changes in political journalism An opportunity or threat for democracy?
• Part IV Conclusion
• Index