The Battle For Campaign Agenda In Britain — страница 5

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The drive for readers may also have indirectly influenced the shift in partisanship, if papers decided to follow, rather than lead, changes in popular support for the government, although evidence here remains inconclusive. At the start of the campaign, according to MORI polls from January 1st to March 17 1997, out of nineteen daily and Sunday papers, only the Express and Telegraph had an overall majority of readers who said they would vote Conservative (see Table 2). Papers may have believed that they could not expect to retain their popularity if they advocated policies which failed to get the support of the majority of their readers. This was publicly acknowledged by Lord Rothermere, proprietor of the Mail, in the aftermath of the election, who was asked whether the editor,

Paul Dacre, would be allowed to continue to express his Euroscepticism:”It is a free country, and he is entitled to his views and to express them. But, of course, if they start to affect the circulation that will be different.” 14In many countries which used to have a strongly partisan press, like the Netherlands, political coverage is now driven more strongly by an autonomous ‘media logic’ in the fierce competition for readers rather than by traditional allegiances or the politics of their proprietors. “Modern media are more powerful, more independent, and more determined to pursue their own interests through a professional culture of their own making.”15. This dealignment has increased the complexity and uncertainty of media management for parties, who can no longer

rely on getting their message out through a few well-known and sympathetic sources. The Growing Fragmentation of the Electronic Media Although newspapers have shrunk, the electronic media expanded during this same period, with far greater diversification in the 1990s. The erosion of the BBC/ITV duopoly of viewers proceeded relatively slowly in Britain, compared with the fall in the network share of the audience in wired countries like the United States, the Netherlands and Canada. Channel 5 covered about two-thirds of Britain when launched in March 1997, although with a modest audience, and this added to the choice of four terrestrial channels. But today the BBC and ITV duopoly faces the greatest competition from the rapid evolution of digital, cable and satellite television

narrowcasting, and also from new forms of interactive communications like the Internet. The first satellite services became available in Britain from Sky TV in February 1989, followed by BSB the following year. By 1992, about 3 percent of homes had access to cable TV, while 10 percent had a satellite dish. In contrast by 1997 almost a fifth of all households could tune into over fifty channels on satellite and cable. In these homes, more than a third of all viewing was on these channels. During the campaign, between 10-15 percent of the audience usually watched cable and satellite programmes every evening. Occasionally when there was wall-to-wall election on the terrestrial channels, like on Thursday 24th April, a week before the election, the proportion of cable and satellite

viewers jumped to almost a quarter of the audience. Moreover, Sky News, CNN, Channel 5, and BBC Radio’s Five Live, have altered the pace of news, to brief headlines on the hour every hour. While probably only political junkies surfed the internet, the easy availability of the BBC’s Election ‘97, ITN Online, the online headlines from the Press Association and Reuters, party home pages, as well as electronic versions of The Times and The Telegraph, dramatically speeded the news cycle. The BBC’s Politics ‘97, with easy access to RealAudio broadcasts of its major political programmes, promises the shape of things to come. With 24 hour coverage, the acceleration of the news cycle has dramatically increased the need for parties to respond, or get knocked off their feet, by a

suddenly shifting agenda. Strategic Party Communications during the Permanent Campaign As press-party loyalties have declined, and the outlets for electronic news have diversified, politicians have been forced to respond to a more complex communications environment. Parties have been transformed by the gradual evolution of the permanent campaign where the techniques of spin doctors, opinion polls, and professional media management are increasingly applied to routine everyday politics. The central role of Peter Mandelson in the Labour campaign, and the high-tech developments in media management at Millbank Tower, are not isolated phenomenon16. Supposedly modelled on the war room in the Clinton campaign, the Millbank organisation had a tight inner core, including Peter Mandelson,