Media managementThe term ‘media man

Media management
The term ‘media management’ does not, in this context, refer to those
engaged in the professional work of managing media organisations, but to
the wide variety of practices whereby political actors may seek to control,
manipulate or influence media organisations in ways which correspond to
their political objectives. To use such a term conveys, probably accurately,
the politicians’ view that the media are valuable but potentially unruly allies
in the political process: essential for public exposure but unpredictable and
with a tendency to display independence. As we saw in Chapter 4, even the
most loyal of a party’s friends in the media (such as the British ‘Tory’ press
before it changed its loyalties in the era of New Labour) can embarrass and
put unwelcome pressure on it. The relationship of mutual interdependence
between political actors and media organisations described earlier does not
preclude severe criticism of the former by the latter, nor the more routine
monitoring of political power implied by the ‘fourth estate’ watchdog role.
In this context media management comprises activities designed to
maintain a positive politician–media relationship, acknowledging the needs
which each has of the other, while exploiting the institutional characteristics
of both sets of actor for maximum advantage. For the politicians, this
requires giving the media organisation what it wants, in terms of news or
entertainment, while exerting some influence over how that something is
mediated and presented to the audience.
POLITICAL PUBLIC RELATIONS
123
As was the case with advertising, it would be a mistake to think that
media management in this sense is new in democratic politics. Chapter 2
noted that the first newspaper interview with a public figure was conducted
in the US in 1859 (Boorstin, 1962), and that the first American news release
was issued in 1907. The interview form was imported to Britain in the
1880s, as subsequently were all the techniques of influencing media coverage
pioneered in America (Silvester, 1993).
We have traced the development of the political public relations industry
from the work of Ivy Lee and Edward Bernays at the turn of the twentieth
century. But, as with advertising, media management has increased in
political importance in parallel with the advance of mass communication,
television in particular, which has provided ever more opportunities (and
dangers) for politicians to harness the efforts and skills of professionals, and
through them seek to influence public opinion. Politicalparties, their leaders
and their public relations advisers have become steadily more sophisticated
in their appreciation of the implications for their media management efforts
of journalistic news values, technical constraints on news gathering and
commercial prerogatives. Since F. D. Roosevelt’s live radio broadcasts in the
1930s, through Ronald Reagan’s reprisal of that idea in the 1980s, to Bill
Clinton’s ‘meet the people’ broadcasts of the 1990s, and Tony Blair’s live
statements and news conferences, such as his description of Princess Diana
in the hours following her death as ‘the people’s princess’, politicians have
become – thanks largely to the new profession of media managers – more
adept at exploiting media. As we shall see, many journalists consider that the
process has pushed the media–politician relationship beyond that state of
mutual interdependence to one of media dependenceon, and deference to,
politicians, so that journalists should now consciously adopt a more
detached, critical approach to the use of these techniques.
For many analysts of political communication, the modern era of
political public relations begins with the Nixon–Kennedy presidential
debates of September 1960 (Kraus and Davis, 1981). Political scientists
agree that this event had a key impact in the 1960 campaign. Here we note
that the live presidential debate – now an American institution, copied in
many other democracies – is the archetypal ‘free media’ event. In itself it
guarantees the politicians extensive live coverage, since the serious broadcasting organisations must all report it fully, providing acres of follow-up
coverage of the issues raised and the respective performances of the
participants. The debate sets the agendain a contemporary US presidential
campaign. It provides a platform for a candidate to appeal directly to the
mass audience and to demonstrate his or her superiority over the opponent.
And for the politician it is, in contrast to advertising, free.
As is characteristic of free media, however, the presidential debate also
carries the possibility of catastrophic failure. Live and unedited, mistakes are
more difficult to cover up and a candidate’s detailed, intelligent articulation
COMMUNICATING POLITICS
124
of policies can be fatally undermined by one slip. In his 1976 debate with
Jimmy Carter, incumbent Gerald Ford unintentionally reinforced a growing
image of him as stupid and lightweight by appearing to suggest that Poland
was not part of the Soviet bloc. Ford probably knew what he was trying to
say, as no doubt did most of the audience, but the verbal faux pas haunted
him for the rest of the campaign, contributing substantially to his defeat by
Carter. Carter himself, during one of the 1980 debates with Ronald Reagan,
appealed to the audience’s anxiety about the Republican’s hawkishness by
introducing the image of his daughter, Amy, losing sleep at night over the
issue of nuclear weapons. Coverage of the debate tended to take the view
that this was a cynical manipulation of a child, furthering the process by
which Carter lost to Reagan on polling day. The debates between Al Gore
and George W. Bush in the 2000 election transformed the latter’s image as a
bumbling, ignorant cowboy to that of an attractive, electable candidate.
Gore, by contrast, emerged from the debates with a reputation as a timid,
pedantic bore.
The live debate format encapsulates the great dilemma of free media for
modern politicians: the massive exposure which it generates can win
elections (this, for example, has become the received wisdom about John F.
Kennedy’s narrow victory over Richard Nixon in the 1960 campaign, which
he won by only 17,000 votes). It can also lose them over such a simple matter
as a slip of the tongue.
Britain, in contrast to the US, did not have a tradition of live debating
between candidates for the highest governmental office, although each
passing general election campaign was accompanied by calls for such debates
from the challengers. British prime ministers, Labour and Conservative, well
aware of the dangers debates can throw up, have until recently taken the
view that one of the privileges of incumbency is to refuse to participate in
such an uncontrolled spectacle. The assumption here is that there is more to
be gained by playing the role of a dignified statesperson, operating above the
glitzy presidentialism of the debate format, than could be lost by being seen
as aloof and inaccessible. The first break with this approach came in June
1994, following the death of Labour leader John Smith, when the three
candidates for the succession – Tony Blair, Margaret Beckett and John
Prescott – debated live on BBC’s Panoramaprogramme, the first time such
a debate had ever been broadcast on British television. The Liberal
Democrats undertook the same exercise for their leadership campaign in
2006, as did Labour leadership contenders in 2010.
I