How powerful is the Media in British Politics?

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How powerful is the Media in British Politics?

Abstract

To answer this question it will be necessary to consider how the media has affected and shaped the course and direction of politics today in Britain. I will therefore be considering how powerful the different forms of media are at conveying political messages and the extent to which these affect the voting public. A case will be argued that media does indeed have a profound effect, however this is countered by the showing that the power of the media is limited by the fact that by its mere nature is to mirror public opinion.

Barely after the ballot box's had been closed on Election Day 1992, The Sun newspaper ran the headline proclaiming "it's The SUN wot won it" referring to John Major's victory over Neil Kinnock in the polls. This is just one of many examples of the apparent power that the media has in British politics -to what extent this power is merely perceived or in fact real, will be discussed in dept in this essay.

In today's society, media, especially television, has undoubtedly become the most effective way to spread messages. These messages could be asking you to buy a certain car, a brand of washing powder, subscribe to a religious persuasion, or merely showing you how to decorate your front room. Is it just coincidence that children can often recite advertising jingles they have heard on television or radio long before they can construct a proper sentence?

Before media was embraced into British politics (i.e. before the event of high circulation newspapers, radio and television), communication was mainly verbal - therefore political ideals would have to be spread by word of mouth, which could in theory of lead to a "Chinese whispers" phenomenon, where the message is constantly changing. This is one of the great political powers of the mass media - a source of media (i.e. a paper or TV programme) can create one uniform message and broadcast it to millions of people.

Many people often argue that the media, especially television has had the power to completely change the criteria of what makes a successful politician, therefore redefining politics itself. Image is now considered all important in politics, the days when a politician was allowed the time to fully purvey his point of view are long gone- in order to satisfy the modern television watchers increasingly short attention span political messages now have to be squeezed into two or three minutes or into "soundbites" lasting just a few seconds, as Bill Jones says in his book Politics UK, "Orators are obsolete"(Jones et al, 2001). With such a short time to judge a politician (and therefore the party / policies that he or she stands for) other things apart from their ideals become far more important, such as the way he or she may look, their tone of voice or even accent. Bill Jones goes as far to say "some politicians are arguably barred from the highest office on account of their looks" citing the fact that "Labour's Robin Cook's red hair and gnome-like appearance are said by some experts to disqualify him from the partys' leadership" (Jones et al, 2001).. We have to ask ourselves is the house of commons really filled with brilliant political thinkers - or merely people who have the panache and style to appeal to the media?
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Officially Television reporting of politics has to be neutral, however, inadvertently or not, the medium (together with all types of media) exhibits a certain degree of political bias. This is most effectively demonstrated by the fact that programme makers, especially news programme editors always have to decide what angle to report a story from, with the resulting angle often taking on one political message or another. A poignant example of this was during the miners strike in the early 80's when many editors choose to run segments concerning police brutality against the strikers, its alleged because it was ...

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