The Blog of Bryony Victoria King

The Press and Politics: Long Term Relationship Problems

Rupert Murdoch: Megalomanic

I feel inclined to climb out of my blog quarry to comment on the issues surrounding the phone hacking scandal. Many questions havearisen in the fallout of the scandal concerning the relationship between the press and politicians and these are questions that have had an interest in for several years. Many are asking why Murdoch holds such power and influence over British politics and why has this been allowed to happen. In an attempt to try and explain some of this situation myself I have written the below, which hopefully at least a few people will find vaguely interesting and informative.

The relationship between press and politicians and political parties in Britain is fascinating, with a long fascinating history. I could write several books on the subject, many people have indeed written books on the subject, however I will try and keep this outpouring as succinct as possible, although there are many more questions, issues and factors that can be considered.

It really was the ‘Sun wot won it’

The issue of Murdoch’s influence over British politics and politicians has become a hot topic over the last few days. People are demanding to know why politicians are seemingly scared of offending this man and his corporation, News International. Ed Miliband was the first to come out defiantly against the Murdoch machine, stating that Rebekah Brooks should consider her position and has since said.

“For too long, the political class have been too concerned about what people in the press would think and too fearful of speaking out. We must all bear responsibility for that, my party has not been immune from it, nor has the current government.”

The problem is they were probably right to be fearful, for years the backing of the Murdoch Empire could guarantee an election win. Even before Murdoch burst onto the scene it was unlikely that you were looking at an election win without The Sun/Daily Herald or The Times, or more importantly, both, on your side. Labour came to power in 1945 with backing of both. In the 50’s the two publications, who were then still owned by different organisations, were split in their backing, with The Times backing the Conservatives, who won, and The Daily Herald backing Labour. In 1964 Labour came back to power with the support of both, the only anomalies to the rule occur in the mid – late 1970’s, where Labour win without full backing, and from 1981 onwards you only win an election with the backing of both. Incidentally, it was 1981 when Murdoch tied together his empire with The Times, having already owned The Sun since 1969.

On a basic level it is easy to understand why any political party would want to have Murdoch on their side, even if you don’t like it. Anybody who has to deal regularly with the press even on a small scale, as an individual or small business or organization, will be aiming to build up a relationship with their particular publication and the journalists who work there to ensure that they get good coverage for whatever it is they are trying to promote. On the small scale it isn’t much of an issue, people want a friendly relationship to ensure fair, accurate and positive coverage and having the right relationship with the local press is probably likely to produce fair, accurate and positive coverage when warranted.

The problem is when you reach the high end of the scale, the top tiers of British politics and the world of the national press, everything now becomes wildly exaggerated and distorted. ‘Spin’ and ‘bias’ enter the murky mix and fairness and accuracy are sparse.

Clement’s conundrum.

Clement Attlee: All-round hero

This is the dilemma that dear Clement Attlee found himself in back in 1945 when it was realized that political communication to the public was important, 87% of people were now reading the daily press, were politicised by the Second World War and almost all the adult population now had the right to vote. Good old Attlee presumed that government communications would be a simple technical task of passing facts to the press to reach a receptive public. A fair assumption, but a false one.

Problems with this simple method of communication were soon evident. The government had problems internally with the newly formed Central Office of Information becoming overwhelmed by information from all Ministerial quarters, not knowing how best to prioritise and popularise information and getting lambasted by the press, opposition and even by Labour supporters for failing to function correctly. A fine chap called Herbert Morrison, Lord President in the 1945 Labour government and head of information policy, stepped in to sort things out but the COI was seemingly unable to function without his expertise, which led to a government PR disaster in 1947 when Britain faced one of the worst winters on record and coal and fuel supplies were running out. The public felt the government had misled them in some way, or hidden information, and that the crisis could have been averted.

What became clear during this crisis was that the average citizen simply did not always understand the facts that the government was trying to communicate. A conscious separation of policy and presentation began and use of the press became more selective, information was tailored more to suit the public and ministers were briefed on the best way to present speeches and arguments. Arguably this was the beginnings of what we would today consider “spin doctoring” (by the way, for those who think spin doctoring and New Labour are coterminous there is a wealth of evidence to show Thatcher and Major embracing and practicing forms of spin during the 1970’s, 1980’s and early 1990’s) but the intentions of politicians in the 1940’s were generally noble. They were just aiming to present policy and information in an accessible format.

The press themselves were another huge problem for Attlee’s government. As mentioned above much of the presses were supportive ofLabour in 1945 but this soon began to break down. Vitriolic reporting against the government led Herbert Morrison to revive an old idea – for the influences, practices and responsibility of the press to be investigated by a Royal Commission.

This will sound horribly familiar today – the problem was that many, especially on the left, believed that the press was neither free nor fair and that the control of the presses by a minority of powerful individuals was a threat to democracy.

Skipping ahead, the Royal Commission confirmed the government’s suspicions that the press could not be relied upon to supply the public with the basis for sound political judgment and was not keeping the nation properly informed. On the downside the Commission found that there were no obvious means really available for regulating the press. This put politicians in a difficult position as the press still had a significant amount of influence over public opinion, therefore the only solution readily available for the government was to find ways of influencing and gaining control over the press and the two became intertwined.

Breaking up is hard to do.

Fast forward to present day and it still seems more like it is the press who are holding the balance of power in the relationship. A particular Party can influence the press but only if the press are willing to be influenced by that Party and give them positive coverage. The politicians hold power too though; only the favoured presses are going to get the best exclusive stories from them. They rely on each other.

Nothing really has changed. The situation that perturbed Clement Attlee and Herbert Morrison still exists, politicians do not trust the press to report fairly, and therefore they seek to court them to avoid unfair and inaccurate coverage. Over the years this has gotten widely out of hand and we are in a situation where political parties have felt the need to court the most influential presses, specifically Murdoch owned, but this hasn’t resulted in fair and accurate coverage at all. The coverage is always ridiculously biased in favour of the Party that the Murdoch Empire chooses to support at the time.

Again the same situation exists now as it did back in the 1940’s. The concern is that the press is neither free nor fair and that the control of the presses by a minority of powerful individuals is a threat to democracy and the public are not happy about that, nor should they be. People are contacting their MPs and asking them to “be brave”, oppose the BskyB deal, demand an inquiry, ask Ofcom to investigate Murdoch and above all stop being “scared” of one man and his influence.

In the past it would be too easy to be scared but perhaps the press is not the grand force it used to be. I said earlier that every Party that had won the backing of The Sun and The Times since 1981 had won the general election, this isn’t entirely true. In 2010 the Conservatives had the backing of both and Murdoch’s divine blessing but they didn’t actually win the election, the just lost not as badly as the others did really. This could suggest that Murdoch and his little print empire is not as influential as it used to be, as the public turn more to new media and social networking for their information. However it would be wholly inaccurate to say that the press doesn’t matter and doesn’t hold a substantial amount of influence and whilst that situation still exists it is likely that politicians will always feel forced to seek friendly relationships with them.

Even if the traditional print newspaper went into decline entirely the same problem would exist with other forms of media. The only way to stop it would be if all politicians from all parties said “right, none of us will have a relationship with the media and we’ll see if they report the facts fairly and leave it up to the public to make a decision based on those facts who to vote for”. It isn’t going to happen though. In practical terms it would be impossible for politicians and political parties not to have any sort of relationship with the media and even without it you would be relying on the media to report fair and accurately, with no bias, which is also an unlikely scenario. However, having the press report political matters more responsibly and without the unhealthy dose of bias thrown in would be a step towards solving the problem. I wouldn’t expect the press to ever be completely fair and unbiased, everyone has bias (I am biased in writing this blog) but there are certainly improvements that could be made to this unhealthy press-political relationship.

Now, the three main Party leaders are calling for a new watchdog to replace the Press Complaints Commission, in light of the seriousness of phone hacking practices. Perhaps a new watchdog could work towards fixing the unhealthy press-politician relationship but I think it would be one heck of a difficult job.