Soap Opera or Mr.Bean?

 

By Markus Petteri Laine<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

 

A Short Case Study on the Realms of Political Communications through a News Article Published on The Guardian Newspaper Under the British Parliamentary Elections on <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />February 8, 2005

 

The Guardian news article 'Campbell fires off four-letter blast at BBC' is a story about a famous spin doctors (a political communications advisor) mock up. It is a news story about complex mediated politics, where a political communication professional had denied running a mocking campaign against a political rival, and 'mistakenly' sends an Email meant for his colleague, which proves himself being responsible for running the campaign. He sent his confession accidentally to the media that had accused him of running the mock campaign, which he had earlier denied running and calling them 'twats' at their face.

 

This study tries to make sense on the news worthiness of this piece and to find what is this cat and mouse games driving motives and what some of the consequences of it are.

Campbell fires off four-letter blast at BBC

Lisa O'Carroll and Matthew Tempest Tuesday February 8, 2005[1]

Mr Campbell sent the email to Andrew McFadyen (BBC Newsnight) after he inquired whether the prime minister's former communications director (Campbell) was the mastermind behind the recent adverts featuring Michael Howard (the Tory 'opposition' leader) as a flying pig and as a Shylock-type character.

"We were digging around the story that Alastair Campbell was behind the flying pigs posters and had been trying to get someone from the Beattie agency (Trevor Beattie, creative chief at Labour's ad agency TBWA)  to come back all day. Then we simply put a polite request to Campbell saying this is X, would he like to comment? ", says Andrew McFadyen. "To our surprise we got a reply. We thought how bizarre but came to the conclusion that we could use it - we had asked a question and this is the reply we got."

Mr Campbell: "Just spoke to Trev (Trevor Beattie, creative chief at Labour's ad agency TBWA) think TBWA shd give statement to newsnight saying party and agency work together well and nobody here has spoken to standard. Posters done by TBWA according to polotical brief. Now fuck off and cover something important you twats."

(BBC) insider: "Then half an hour later we got the second email saying he had sent it by mistake and, to our surprise again, admitting that yes he was behind the flying pigs. It was dynamite."

Mr Campbell sent the Newsnight reporter a second email 30 minutes later. He did not apologise but explained he had sent the email inadvertently and that the programme's presenter, Jeremy Paxman, should see the funny side of his inability to use his Blackberry (a hand held emailing device).

Mr Campbell: "Not very good at this email Blackberry malarkey. Just looked at log of sent messages, have realised email meant for colleagues at TBWA has gone to you. For the record, first three sentences of email spot on. No row between me and trevor. Posters done by them according to our brief. I dreamt up flying pigs. Pigs not great but okay in the circs of Tories promising tax cuts and spending rises with the same money. TBWA made production. Final sentence of earlier email probably a bit colourful and personal considering we have never actually met but I'm sure you share the same sense of humour as your star presenter Mr P. Never known such a silly fuss since the last silly fuss but there we go. Must look forward not back."

The programme (Newsnight) claimed victory in getting the pugnacious former tabloid hack to admit he had been the brains behind the controversial "flying pigs" aborted poster campaign.

The programme had been attempting to uncover who was behind Labour's aborted poster campaign depicting Michael Howard as a Fagin-style hypnotist (the abuser in Oliver Twist), and both Mr Howard and the shadow chancellor, Oliver Letwin, both Jewish, as flying pigs. Although the Tories never complained about the posters officially, others described them as anti-semitic. Labour's official election strategist, Alan Milburn, insisted they were merely anti-Tory.

Mr Campbell returned to the Labour fold - after 18 months spent appearing on TV and writing a sports column for the Times - at last week's unveiling of the Labour election slogan, "Forwards, not back."

Framing the News

The Triggers, Frames and Messages in Newspaper Coverage

The Princeton Survey Research Associates have published the first part of their Project for Excellence in Journalism. According to this study the most common story telling frame, the combative frame conflict, winners and losers and revealing wrongdoing accounted for almost one third all news stories. The penchant for framing stories around these combative frames is even more common at the top of the front page. Although newspapers increasingly talk about the need to explain and interpret, the findings suggest they do less of it that might be expected. Explanatory frames those that reveal how things work, how they fit into larger trends, or historical context accounted for 12% of all stories. The findings also confirm a presumption on the part of journalists that readers don't care much about policy or its impact.[2]    

The Campbell story at hand falls nicely to the combative framing category. What seems unclear though is wether Journalism itself is the other combative party. If we can determine that the underlying message of this 'news bit' would be the scamming politicians, what would be the trigger for this story? In other words what made this event or issue news in the first place?

In this case study a privately owned national newspaper is releasing news about an incident that has happened in the national broadcasting company's (BBC) study about the political horse race under the primary election. The story is told through an anti-hero protagonist (Campbell) who is laughed at because he has stumbled in his own political manipulation game. The news itself is a reproduction of a reproduction of a reproduction based on communication brake down. The Guardian news bit is based on earlier news by BBC which was an involving party in the birth of the news. A respected newspaper, The Guardian, has taken the role of a judge gossiping a foul by an arc enemy a public relations professional. As the story puts it the rivalling opposition party didn't oppose the mock campaign (what the original news story was about) in the first place. It is clearly obvious that the media has reconstructed this news for its own political benefit. It almost seemed like the media held a grudge against Mr Campbell or at least to what he represents.

Triggering drama, entertainment and distrust

According to The Princeton Survey Research Associates study over half of the news stories (57%) triggered by journalists themselves (either analysis or enterprise) and carrying an enduring message, contained a tone of discontent. Only a quarter of messages were optimistic in nature. These findings suggest that when a story originates from a journalist's own initiative, he may be colouring the information provided with a subtle and even unconscious personal or professional perspective and the messages are fairly predictable, laced with a sense of discontent about the way things are going.[3]

It is very hard to see what kind of hard news value the Campbell article carries. When reading through the article it becomes quite clear that Mr Campbell has sent a message in error to the editor calling him a 'twat', which is quite funny, but the colour and tone of the Guardians news is rather hinting that Mr Campbell had done something close to treason, and should therefore be put out of his misery behind a Sauna somewhere near the Polar circle.   

Generations have been brought up with the means of telling stories. Journalists are the story tellers that narrate the everyday collective reality. There are few basic principles that make a story compelling. These are called the Constituent parts of a Dramatic Narrative: Exposition the introduction part of the story becoming acquainted with the principal characters and their relationships as well as the environment in which the story is set. Collision the complication of a dramatic conflict, a gradual crystallization of a clash of interests. Crisis the central, focal moment of dramatic action occurring between the initial phase when the conflict thickens, and the conclusion. Peripety a reversal, a twist in the development of a dramatic story; it is essentially like collision, but its pace is much more rapid. Anagnorisis revelation, recognition. Catastrophe a resolution, an ending, the outcome of action. Our case study is very common and definitely highly dramatized example of journalism.

Political communications scholars, members of the press, and political elites have traditionally distinguished between entertainment and non-entertainment media. Michael X. Delli Carpini and Bruce A. Williams argue that politics is largely a mediated experience; that political attitudes and actions result from the interpretation of new information through the lenses of previously held assumptions and beliefs; and that these lenses are socially constructed from a range of shared cultural sources. It has become widely accepted that the barriers between non-entertainment media and entertainment media are eroding. Politics is considered more and more as entertainment, competing with other forms of entertainment, and visa versa other entertainment is considered more and more as political.[4]

In our case study we can see a classic example of a news feature that diminishes the credibility of the politicians and the political process'. The whole political sphere is framed as flying pigs, foul-mouthed language, mock campaigning dirty scheming, men who cannot even write proper English running after the self interests of the mighty and rich, and the role of the media is simply to let the good people know what is going on. Anybody with some news experience can tell that the story didn't fill the criteria for morally sound journalism. The funniest thing is that the very same journalists write on the next days' paper worrying over the decline of western democracy. People elect their politicians (reluctantly). Should they elect their journalists, academics and entertainment producers with a public vote as well?

The Power Over Reality

John Street

[5] writes in his introduction to political communications:

In Western Liberal democracies, the mass media have claimed the right to represent the people and to uphold democracy, and the consumers of newspapers and television have come to treat these media sources as the basis on which to think and act in the world.

Majority of the media leans on the realistic values. They acknowledge a linear time concept, a world view where objectivity could be achieved by empirical methods. This deeply rooted view point is taken as 'common sense' as it was common sense to think that the world was flat in the 13^th century.

Mr Street

continues[6]:

Power is rarely exercised directly through the use of brute force. Power relies on our 'common sense' view of how the world is and how it works. These thoughts, the unexamined assumptions of our routines, help us to know our place and our identity. And they are daily disseminated through news and current affairs, situation comedies and blockbuster movies (which all use the dramatic method). It is no surprise that, when political coups take place, the rebels head first for the radio and television stations in order to secure their victory.     

For John Fiske (1996), the central unit of analysis in studying media (and the driving force in public discourse) is not objective reality, but "media events". According to Fiske[7]:

The term media event is an indication that in the post-modern world we can no longer rely on a clear distinction between a "real" event and its mediated 'representation'. Consequently, we cannot work with the idea that the "real" would be more important, significant, or even "true" than the 'representation'. A media event, then, is not a mere representation of what happened, but it has its own reality, which gathers up into itself the reality of the event that may or may not have preceded it.

The intertwining of an event and its mediated "representation" produces what French Postmodernist philosopher Jean Baudrillard calls hyper-reality.[8] In this sphere media not only represents but virtually participates in creating the "real". Good example is the latest invasion to Iraq. The global media speculated over the upcoming assault every day over a year before the actualisation of the event took place.

In the Campbell case we have a professional spin doctor, whose actual job is to master the meaning and symbolics that the media is constructed of. By mastering the language of the media he is able to scrutinize and control the messages that his employing politicians wishes to get through in the public sphere. He is kind of reproducing actuality by fore thinking the possible contexts of the presented meaning in its whole time span including its reproduction use and its possible leads to new publicity developments. The Campbell news bit scrutinizes the whole issue of presentation and representation in political context. It reveals nicely the media's own role in using actual political power by ridiculing Mr Campbell's human error. The power struggle seems to be about laying the foundations about what is currently 'realistic' (real) but most definitely not about what is the truth.

The "post conservative" science world has claimed that it is not capable of determining hypothesis' to be right, it can only determine if something would be wrong. Empirical approach on nature of the truth has an in build conflict, since every given answer seem to evoke series of new questions. This logic applies as long as we agree on that the meaning of "the Truth" is something that is undivided, harmonic and unchanging. Therefore the conflicts between differing points of views of the world and "reality" resemble more a game than search for what is the truth, which Journalism and the academic world has paradoxically acclaimed to be their task. The Campbell story evokes a question whether the pro Labour Guardian newspaper was playing along with Mr Campbell by granting his original banned mock campaign more publicity?   

 

Conclusions

After the Enlightment period world has been driven by empirical and materialistic values. Post World War II times have been dominated by rivalling political super powers, which were both based on so called realistic world views. On the brink of digitalization and mobile information highways the world has to come in terms with the cultural and technological evolution as the immaterial dimension is increasingly intertwining the sphere of our 'realism'.

The very nature of the so called 'real' world is, and has always been changing. These day's people draw money from walls, call long distance phone calls from the northern wilderness to the Masai men in the Tanzanian jungle. We have vacations on the sunny beaches of exotic Brazil and control the public sphere with hand held computers wherever we go.

The resulting media environment is rearranging traditional power relationships as the authority of journalists, public officials, and other political gatekeepers is increasingly challenged by other producers of political and social meaning including the public itself. As the Campbell story shows the reaction speed of communications has increased and is becoming more informal and public. This demand for quick reactions doesn't necessary mean that the communications would be more accurate or truthful. 

Looking back at the drama recept that traditionally constitutes a functioning story, one can argue that the whole story telling institution, wether it was news or folklore, is based on conflict and is therefore a fundamentally unconstructive mirror to its audience. Story telling seems to be audience's entertaining competition against the misfortune it constitutes. The story telling tradition conditions that life itself is over coming conflicts more than anything else. Trying to find the undivided, harmonic and unchanging truth by means of conflict, division and debate seems to a rational mind an impossible mission.

Media and the politicians live in a symbiosis; one doesn't do with out the other. It is healthy to remember that even the universally positive development uses power and most definitely controls its message. "Never known such a silly fuss since the last silly fuss but there we go. Must look forward not back."

  Alastair Campbell

 

Bibliography

Fiske 1996, P2

'Framing the News.'

Source: Project For Excellence in Journalism [www.journalism.org].

 

Introduction To Political Communication.' Source: Street, John (2001). Mass Media, Politics and Democracy. London: Palgrave MacMIllian.

 

Let Us Infotain You: Politics in the New Media Environment. Michael X. Delli Carpini and Bruce A. Williams

The Guardian: Campbell fires off four-letter blast at BBC by Lisa O'Carroll and Matthew Tempest Tuesday on February 8, 2005