The Battle For Campaign Agenda In Britain — страница 8
the election? Here we can turn to content analysis of the national press provided by CARMA, who monitored 6,072 articles in the national daily and Sunday newspapers from the announcement of the election (18th March) until polling day (1st May). CARMA analysed whether the article featured the Conservative party (4,827 articles), Labour (4,536), the Liberal Democrats (1,390) or the Referendum party (319), then for each party classified the major topic of these articles using 150 coding categories (such as inflation, education and trade unions). CARMA counted the number of articles (although not the length) which mentioned each topic every day, as well as estimating the favourability or unfavourability of each story24. This analysis suggests that about a fifth of all the election coverage in the press (19 percent) focussed on campaigning, such as stories about party strategy, the prospects for marginal seats, and much speculation about the (in the event non-existent) television debate. The minutiae of insider electioneering, such as campaign battle buses (complete with layout colour maps), high-tech and wooden soap-boxes, and Blairforce One were described in detail by journalists bored by listening to the standard leadership speeches. If we break the analysis down in more detail, (see Table 3) we find that one quarter of this coverage, but in total only 10 percent of all news stories, was about opinion polls, far less than in recent general elections. As others have noted, the media commissioned fewer polls than in 1987 or 1992, and they gave them less coverage. About a fifth of all front-page lead stories in the national press were devoted to the polls in 1987 (20 percent) and in 1992 (18 percent) compared with only 4 percent in 199725. Coverage of the polls on television news dropped from 14 percent in 1992 to only 7 percent in 199726. This was probably due to new guidelines on television, plus the flatness of the race, with perpetually large Labour leads, as well as the reputation of the polls following their fiasco in 1992. Overall there was relatively little difference in the amount of attention given to each party in terms of electioneering, although it is notable that more stories about the Liberal Democrats focussed on stories about tactical voting, such as The Observer’s detailed survey of marginal seats towards the end of the campaign, and this coverage may have influenced the high levels of tactical voting which were evident in the results. Almost half of all the press coverage (45 percent) discussed policy issues (see Table 4), with detailed sections in the broadsheets analysing the contents of each party’s manifesto promises. About one quarter of this coverage (27 percent) focussed on problems of domestic social policy, particularly education, the national health service, pensions and crime. The priority given to education by Labour, and even more by the Liberal Democrats, seems to have paid dividends in their media coverage. The economy absorbed another quarter of the coverage, particularly taxation, trade unions (for Labour), unemployment and privatisation, in that order. The analysis clearly reveals the extent of the failure of the Conservatives to focus media attention on their positive achievements. There was remarkably little political coverage of Britain’s low levels of inflation, the balance of payments figures, strong economic growth, and low interest rates, not to speak of the booming stockmarket27. Altogether economic and social policy absorbed the majority (58 percent) of Labour’s issue coverage, broadly reflecting their manifesto priorities, particularly the five specific policy pledges mentioned earlier. In terms of agenda-setting, the only major topics given significantly more attention in the press coverage than in Labour’s manifesto were the issues of trade unions and privatisation. In contrast, despite John Major’s strenuous attempts to trumpet the government’s economic record at daily press conferences at Smith Square, and their BRITAIN IS BOOMING slogan, only a fifth (22 percent) of their issue coverage in the press focussed on the economy. The Conservatives simply failed to set the media agenda: there was twice as much coverage of their record on unemployment as inflation. In most elections foreign policy rarely surfaces as a major issue, unless the country is at war or there is major international conflict abroad. During the 1992 campaign, for example, although Labour’s defence policy was highlighted by Tory posters, foreign affairs occupied a mere one percent of front page news28. Yet in 1997, despite an era of peace and prosperity, at a time when the west has won the cold war, a remarkable
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