hocs18 art.16 wahl-jorgensen proof

8/12/2019 HOCS18 Art.16 Wahl-Jorgensen Proof

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Karin Wahl-Jorgensen16 The production of political coverage:The push and pull of power, routines andconstraints

Abstract: This chapter discusses the journalistic practices shaping the reporting of politics. It is argued to conceive of political journalism as a subspace within thejournalistic field that interacts intensively with the political field, because thistheoretical approach highlights the power relations and world views produced bythe insider culture of journalists and political actors. Moreover, the chapter sug-gests that this insider culture affords political journalists privileged access to infor-mation, but may also hamper their autonomy and the transparency of theiractions. Further, the chapter argues that the routines and constraints of newsproduction only strengthen this reliance on authoritative sources. Technologicalchange and commercial pressures, however, may represent a challenge to thisrelationship and the practices which govern it. The chapter closes with a call forstudies on political journalism in non-Western contexts, on non-elite, local mediaand for more comparative research efforts in order to broaden the rather partialand limited picture of political journalism we have so far.

Key Words: political journalism, journalistic field, autonomy of journalism, news

values, news routines, opinion-leading media

1 Introduction

This chapter discusses the journalistic practices surrounding the reporting of poli-tics. It makes the argument that the practices of political reporting are under-pinned by a key paradox: On the one hand, journalists are supposed to be in anadversarial relationship to concentrations of power, acting as advocates of thepublic (Higgins 2008). They are central to the media s role as a watchdog on gov-ernment, holding it accountable for its actions through constant scrutiny, and pro-

viding citizens with the information that they need to make political decisions.The editorial processes involved in the production of political news have profoundconsequences for what information is available to audiences: The gatekeeping,news selection and agenda-setting work of journalism determine the universe of available political information, including what news events are covered and whichindividuals are given a voice, and which remain invisible to the public. On theother hand, political journalists are also frequently understood as being part of an insider political elite, complicit and intricately intertwined with political power


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306 Karin Wahl-Jorgensen

(e.g., McNair 2011). This privileged insider status, in turn, comes to shape thepriorities of news production, alongside more subtle institutional constraints suchas production routines and the spatial and temporal organization of news-gather-ing.

The relationship between political actors and journalists has been raised asan issue of concern in relation to debates over the health of democracy and citizen-ship. This discussion has become particularly heated over the past few decades asscholars and observers have grappled with evidence of declining voter engagementand political participation, and an increase in political disenchantment and cyni-cism. There is by now a fairly long-standing and well-established set of argumentssuggesting, as Fallows (1998) memorably put it, that audiences believe that thenews media have become too arrogant, cynical, scandal-minded and destructive

(p. 3) in their coverage of politics. This, in turn, is alleged to generate a spiral of cynicism among citizens (Capella and Jamieson 1992). Such arguments are oftenassociated with a media malaise thesis, which suggests that the media areresponsible for public disengagement or malaise because of their negative andcynical coverage of politics (see also the chapters by Hopmann and by Maurer).The evidence for this thesis is, however, debatable, as scholars who have studiedthe phenomenon have been frequently found more robust support for the alterna-tive hypothesis that the consumption of political news may actually be mobilizing,rather than alienating audiences. Along those lines, there is evidence for causaland reciprocal relationships between political interest and attention to politicalnews, and between political interest and exposure to some, but not all, news

media (Strmbck and Shehata 2010: 575; see also Newton 2005; Norris 2000).Among the writers who have provided the most careful analyses of the struc-tural causes of public disenchantment with politics and the place of journalismwithin them are Jay Blumler, Michael Gurevitch and Stephen Coleman, who haveexamined what they see as a crisis of public communication that is sapping the vitality of democratic political culture (Blumler and Coleman 2010: 140; see alsoBlumler and Gurevitch 1995). Among other things, the crisis is evidenced in thedecline in voting and other forms of political activism, and an increase in votercynicism.

To Blumler and Coleman (2010), there are a series of underlying causes forthis crisis, including the increasingly adversarial nature of political reporting, theemphasis on politics as a game, the competitive nature of journalism and politics,the burgeoning of political news and information sources, and the emergence of a post-deferential culture in which politicians are forced to compete for attentionwith popular culture (see also the chapters by Stanyer, by Aalberg and by Hop-mann). These trends, they suggest, have alarming consequences for processes of political representation and citizenship:

Political representation has come to be an act of ventriloquism in which the public is leftfeeling like inanimate dummies, spoken for and sometimes spoken to, but rarely spoken with.


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The production of political coverage 307

The demos have become outsiders, some gaping at the political show through the prism of anincreasingly cynical media that appears to be run by a clique of entrenched insiders, othersfirmly turning their backs on it in varying degrees of distaste (Blumler and Coleman 2010:142).

Clearly, then, in their views and those of other observers, the production of politi-cal news and the relationships between political actors, journalists and citizenswhich inform it has profound consequences for democracy. Related argumentsfocus on examining the conditions for news production, making the case that thereis a crisis in political journalism arising from organizational constraints whichlimit the ability of reporters to fulfill their role in democracy. This crisis leads towards a more conformist, less critical reporting environment which is increas-

ingly likely to prove supportive of incumbent governments (e.g., Barnett andGaber 2001: 2) (see also the chapter by Stanyer). The chapter will explore some of these constraints in more detail as central to understanding the production of political news.

Sociologically, political news production is a broad church, encompassingmany kinds of professional practice, as well as complex internal and externalrelations. The category of the political journalist could be understood to entailanything from parliamentary correspondents to celebrity news anchors, localcouncil reporters, political bloggers, and news agency stringers. These professionalroles cover over a variety of specific work practices, positions in the newsroomhierarchy, and specialized skills. Here, although the chapter briefly considers a

broader array of professional practices, the main focus is primarily on the produc-tion of political content at the national level in large part because this is by farthe area treated in most detail by scholarly research. Nonetheless, there is evidenceto suggest the salient impact of an increasing global public sphere (e.g., Volkmer1999) on news production practices, including the emergence of 24-hour newsbroadcasters with a global reach (Cushion and Lewis 2010), alongside the continu-ing importance of international news agencies and foreign correspondents (Han-nerz 2004; Paterson 2011) and local news (Franklin 2006). These developments,while only mentioned in passing here, are part of the broader landscape whichinforms the production of political news.

The chapter opens by considering the distinctive characteristics of political

reporting as a professional field, and considers the journalistic practices of politi-cal reporting, and the institutional constraints which shape them, including tem-poral and spatial constraints of news production. The chapter finally considershow new media technologies, including the rise of social media, are creating newchallenges and opportunities for journalists. While many of these trends shapejournalism as a whole, they have had a particularly significant impact on theprofessional practices of political journalism and raise fundamental questionsabout both its form and viability.


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2 Political reporting as a professional fieldPolitical reporters are in constant contact with powerful political actors. TheFrench sociologist Pierre Bourdieu introduced the idea of viewing social practicesthrough the lens of distinctive and increasingly specialized and autonomous fields. In drawing on such terminology, Bourdieu called attention to the analyti-cal usefulness of examining spheres of action with their own internal hierarchies,power relations, forms of tacit assumptions, and internally relevant markers of achievement and distinction; or what he referred to as forms of capital (e.g., Bour-dieu 1984; Bourdieu 2005; Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992; see also Benson andNeveu 2005). Though fields have increasing degrees of autonomy, they also inter-act in significant and determining ways with other fields. The journalistic field iswidely seen as part of the field of power; that is, it tends to engage with first andforemost those agents who possess high volumes of capital (Benson and Neveu2005: 5). In this context, interactions between the journalistic and political fieldare particularly relevant, and Bourdieu has written about this relationship suggest-ing, in language echoing that of scholars of mediatization, that the journalisticfield is both increasingly influencing, and influenced by, the political field (Bour-dieu 2005: 41). To Champagne (2005) the journalistic field is caught between thefields of politics and the market, weakening the autonomy of its enterprise. Mar-chetti (2005) traced the increasingly specialized subspaces within the journalisticfield as a whole, demonstrating that we need a more differentiated analysis of these subspaces because of the radically diverse backgrounds, experiences andpractices of actors within them. Further, such an analysis also needs to considerthe interactions of the logics of each subfield with external logics, such as thelogics of particular media outlets or types of media, the journalistic field as awhole as well as that of broader mediatized social spaces (including that of poli-tics) (Marchetti 2005: 79) (see also the chapters by Pfetsch and Esser and by vanAlest).

The notion of field theory, as advanced by Bourdieu and his followers, is anindispensable resource for understanding the sociological world inhabited bypolitical journalists or what other authors in the book refer to as political com-munication cultures (see for example the chapter by Pfetsch and Esser). It isparticularly useful in highlighting the push and pull of autonomy and interrela-

tions with other fields but also picks up on structural causes for the close relation-ship between political and journalistic actors, and signals the need for a differenti-ated analysis of journalistic subfields. As research on political correspondents overthe past four decades has demonstrated, they constitute an elite political grouping;better educated and compensated, and more senior than the broader journalisticfield (e.g., Tunstall 1970; Hess 1986; Wahl-Jorgensen 2009).

Moreover, research has highlighted, in line with the observations of Bourdieuand his followers, that not only do political journalists constitute an elite within


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the broader journalistic profession; they are also closely linked with the politiciansthat they report on and are supposed to scrutinize through their reporting. Politicaljournalists and politicians interact in the same narrow professional and socialcircles (see Marchetti 2005). What King and Schudson (1995) wrote about Washing-ton politics is probably true of the ways in which politicians and journalists inter-act in legislatures around the world: The inhabitants of the world of Washingtonpolitics, naturally enough, talk more to one another than to other people, but thereis the danger that this practice can become self-enclosed (p. 150). The terminologythat has arisen around this phenomenon reflects the insularity of such environ-ments: In the US, observers refer to goings on Inside the Beltway (around Wash-ington DC), whereas the phrase, The Westminster bubble is used in the UK (e.g.,Wring 2005) to describe the self-contained universe of journalists and politicalactors who interact in the hallowed corridors of Parliament (see also the chapterby van Aelst).

King and Schudson (1995) examined the prevailing journalistic narrative whichdescribed former US President Ronald Reagan as a highly popular political leader,on account of his unsurpassed communication skills, captured in the widely circu-lating moniker, The Great Communicator. King and Schudson challenged thisaccount on the basis of opinion poll data, arguing that compared to his electedpredecessors, Reagan had the lowest average approval rating for the first two yearsof his administration precisely the years his legend as the Great Communicatorgrew (King and Schudson 1995: 134). They documented that political journalismhas tended to be a largely oral culture, relying far more on face-to-face conversa-

tions than on evidence from documents and public opinion polls, leaving bothjournalists and politicians vulnerable to drawing conclusions that may resonatewithin their insider universe, but have little relevance to the prevailing publicmood. In line with this observation, evidence suggests that, like other journalisticsubcultures, political reporting has historically conducted its business at someremove from its audiences and publics, making assumptions about its views anddesires which are based on common-sense understandings circulating within thenewsroom, rather than systematic data (Herbst 1998; Lewis, Inthorn, and Wahl-Jorgensen 2005). This, however, may be changing at a time where new technolo-gies are enabling increasing audience quantification (e.g., Anderson 2011) andhence a far more acute and constantly updated awareness of audience behavior

and preferences. Nonetheless, these long-standing trends point to an entrenchedcertain insularity in the culture of political journalists something which scholarshave analysed in terms of practices of pack journalism and journalistic coorien-tation (see also the chapter by Stanyer).

In the UK, the so-called lobby journalists have traditionally constituted a par-ticularly elite group among political journalists a small group of reporters (lessthan 200) from national and international news organizations who enjoy privi-leged access to the heart of British political power. The lobby was instituted in


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1884, and the term refers to a physical location, as the status of being a lobbyreporter provides access to the entrance to the House of Commons (Tunstall 1970:3), where journalists can engage in informal interactions with politicians and theiraides. But it also brings with it a broader set of privileges. Lobby correspondentshave historically been granted access to documents prior to their broader dissemi-nation, and have also been given twice-daily briefings by the Prime Minister s staff (e.g., Barnett and Gaber 2001; Tunstall 1970). Though there is evidence that thepower of the lobby is declining in the age of digital information and the rise of 24-hour news (e.g., Barnett and Gaber 2001; Gaber 2011), the broader sociologicalreality of a privileged insider group of political journalists remains salient. As alobby correspondent for the US news agency, Dow Jones, described his experiencein looking from the outside in:

Id say that working in the lobby has been the most peculiar experience I ve had in journalismso far () to a large extent the lobby and the structure of the lobby reflect in a sense thestructure and the atmosphere of Parliament itself. It s an extremely clubby institution ( ) toa large extent it serves the status quo in whatever form you want to interpret that. ( ) thelobby itself has its own hierarchy where the political editors of certain British newspapers areat the top of that hierarchy (Barnett and Gaber 2001: 40).

This journalist s observation neatly encapsulates the distinctive power relationsand hierarchies within this (very privileged) subspace of opinion-leading mediawithin the journalistic field. These, in turn, are predicated on particular forms of cultural capital, and the fact that, like other fields, actors operating within it havea clear interest preserving the status quo (see also the chapters by Stanyer and bySalgado). At the same time, it also highlights how intricately intertwined the sub-space of lobby reporters is with the political subspace of Parliament. These distinc-tive features are deliberately built into the processes of lobby journalism. The 1956 version of the Lobby rules, a document written to introduce new reporters into the venerable institution, opened with the following admonition:

The technique of Lobby journalism can be fully acquired only by experience. It is a techniquewhich brings the journalist into close daily touch with Ministers and Members of Parliamentof all parties, and imposes upon him a very high standard of responsibility and discretion inmaking use of the special facilities given him for writing about political affairs (Tunstall 1970:124).

Indeed, scholars and observers who have written on national political reportingfrequently refer to the insular world formed by the close relationship betweenjournalists and politicians. As Stephen Hess put it, The echo chamber of thisworld gives a special resonance, like the corridors in a hospital or penal institu-tion (Hess 1981: 118). Hesss description calls to mind Michel Foucault s work onthe clinics and prisons (e.g., 1991, 1994), which demonstrates that such institutionsgenerate their own distinctive disciplining logics which might, however, expandtheir influence to the population in general, as in the development of the medical


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gaze

or the broader self-policing discipline arising from the invention of theprison. This suggests, in turn, that we should understand not just the discipliningconsequences of the political echo chamber but also its broader consequences forsociety as a whole.

There are clearly pragmatic reasons for the close relationship between politi-cians and journalists, as their informal, everyday face-to-face contacts facilitatethe production of political news and, along those lines, for the dissemination of politicians messages. As such, the relationship is symbiotic; one which is basedon a mutually beneficial arrangement. One of the key distinctive features of therelationship between political journalists and their political sources is the conven-tion of allowing sources to speak off the record, attributed only as sources closethe White House or a Number 10 source, to mention just a few examples of the

nomenclature used to conceal the identity of sources. To the British political jour-nalist and observer Michael Cockerell and his colleagues, in speaking about therole of the Lobby, these non-attribution rules has turned the Lobby into the PrimeMinister s most useful tool for the political management of the news (Cockerell,Hennessy, and Walker 1984: 33).

It would, however, be misleading to suggest that these rules merely serve theinterests of political actors. In fact, political journalists also view them as a keytool of their trade, because it allows them to publish information of a potentiallysensitive nature which may otherwise remain out of the public domain. As such,both political journalists and their sources have a significant investment in main-taining the attribution rules, despite the fact that they go against increasingly voluble calls for transparency. This investment in the attribution rules was poi-gnantly demonstrated in a study of the institutional setup of the politician/journal-ist relationship in the immediate aftermath of the establishment of the ScottishParliament (Schlesinger, Miller, and Dinan 2001). In their study, based on ethno-graphic work and interviews with politicians and journalists engaged in the pro-cess of establishing the rules of conduct in the newly devolved Scottish Parliament,Philip Schlesinger and his colleagues found that there was great reluctance tomove away from off-the-record briefings in favor of greater transparency. Journal-ists complained that doing so would compromise their relationships with sourcesand hence their access to information. As one political reporter told the authors,in justifying pressure from journalists to maintain the practice of off-the-recordbriefings:

Openness and transparency is judged on the degree of information about what reaches thepublic sphere ( ) and if that takes some element of off the record and senior sources orwhatever, then that is a service to the end of openness and transparency. Transparency of theactual process of government rather than the transparency of the process by which you get it(Schlesinger, Miller, and Dinan 2001: 101).

Such an understanding of transparency is clearly self-serving and fails to addressthe criticisms occasioned by the appearance of a secretive and intransparent rela-


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tionship between journalists and politicians. Nonetheless, this understanding alsorepresents a time-honored view that the ends of transparency justify murkiermeans.

Attribution rules are just one area, albeit a particularly poignant one, whichreveals the precarious nature of political journalists information-gathering practi-ces, and the ways in which it is heavily predicated on forms of secrecy whichcement the insider status of political journalists, while raising questions abouttheir autonomy (see also Tunstall 1970: 17).

Certainly, the close relationship between political and journalistic elites hassignificant consequences for transparency and editorial independence. Outside of the well-trodden Anglo-American contexts, there are significant variations in thespecific terms and nature of this relationship. Daniel Hallin and Paolo Mancini(2004) have suggested that media systems can be distinguished according to aseries of features, including the extent to which journalists are instrumentalized .They define instrumentalization as control of the media by outside actors par-ties, politicians, social groups or movements, or economic actors seeking politicalinfluence who use them to intervene in the world of politics (p. 36). Hallinand Mancini (2004) argued that instrumentalization, alongside the pressures of commercialization, tends to be a threat to journalistic professionalism. Their analy-sis suggests that what they refer to as Mediterranean or Polarized Pluralist mediasystems characterizing countries including France, Greece, Italy, Portugal andSpain are marked by weaker professionalization and varying degrees of instru-mentalization (Hallin and Mancini 2004: 67). Other scholars working in non-West-

ern context have examined sustained and institutionalized practices of patronage,including bribes and the selective awarding of official advertising contracts (Hasty2005; Macias Gonzalez 2012; Wahl-Jorgensen and Cole 2008). These practices sharea relatively formalized and often widely known process for cementing journalist-politician relations which translates into, for the journalists, favorable access toinformation and, for the politicians, favorable coverage, but at the same timethreatens the autonomy of political journalists.

Ethnographic and interview-based studies of the production of political con-tent have tended to echo the idea that while the structurally, socially and physi-cally close relationship between journalists and politicians generates opportunitiesfor the dissemination of information, they may also compromise the independence

of journalists and hence their ability to act as watchdogs on concentrations of power. Barnett and Gaber s (2001) interview-based book on Westminster politicalcorrespondents chart four particular sources of pressure on political journalistswhich are, they suggest, having an adverse impact on the quality of journalisticwork. First of all, they suggest that there has been a shift in the working relation-ship between political journalists and their sources as a result of the professionali-zation of political communication (e.g., Negrine et al. 2007) which has meant thatspin doctors are now increasingly responsible for the communication of political


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messages. The exercise of tight control by increasing savvy media advisers means,according to Barnett and Gaber (2001: 4 5), that it is becoming exceedingly diffi-cult for political journalists to retain a critical distance (see also the chapter byKiousis and Strmbck). Secondly, they suggest that media ownership has animpact on media coverage, as powerful media moguls such as Rupert Murdochtake an active role in shaping political coverage and seeking to influence policy-making processes (Barnett and Gaber 2001: 5 6). Third and fourth, they trace anincreasingly competitive, financially challenging and diversified media environ-ment and changes in the working conditions of journalists, including the emer-gence of new technologies, the increasing requirement for multiskilling and shift-ing and increasingly casualized employment conditions in the media industry(Barnett and Gaber 2001: 7 8). The latter trends have only accelerated in recent years and are, as this chapter later discusses in more detail, reshaping the journal-ism profession as a whole (e.g., Mitchelstein and Boczkowski 2009). Anotherincreasingly salient issue which has elevated the centrality of transparency in dis-cussions over government communications is the rise of public relations as anindustry which seeks to influence policy-making and media coverage behind thescenes (e.g., Davis 2002; Davies 2009; Franklin 2004; Schlesinger, Miller, andDinan 2001). The growth and burgeoning sophistication of the PR industry, com-bined with the decline in the financial and human resources of media organiza-tions, has meant that the vested (and usually corporate) interests represented bylobbyists are now increasingly seen as the invisible center of the political commu-nications process. As Davis (2002) has documented, the public relations industry

is becoming more adept than ever at drawing on or even creating experts, institu-tions and statistics supporting their interested efforts at manufacturing real news (p. 172 173) (see the chapter by Kiousis and Strmbck).

3 Newsroom procedures, routines and constraints

The documentation of institutional constraints and their impact on the productionof political content has been a long-standing theme in scholarship on politicaljournalism. Jeremy Tunstall s 1970 book, The Westminster Lobby Correspondents ,examined the working conditions of British parliamentary correspondents, sug-

gesting that their work is constrained by commercial pressures, news values anda lack of transparency and cooperation with journalists representing other special-isms. Michael Tracey s (1978) book, The Production of Political Television , based inlarge part on ethnographic work and interviews with producers of political pro-grammers on UK terrestrial television, and informed by a political economyapproach, concluded that political television cannot straightforwardly be seen toplay a fourth estate role: [Rather] than serving the electorate or the people asan information-starved collective entity, and therefore acting out a role in a system


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of political communication, such television serves particular institutional andpolitical interests (Tracey 1978: 248).More specifically, Tracey s study demonstrated that any individual ideologies

of political journalists played a limited role in shaping content given the fact thatpolitical journalists, as consummate professionals, were strictly bound and inhib-ited by institutional ground rules, by the concern of the organizational hierarchywith that adherence and by the routinized mechanics of programme making (Tra-cey 1978: 250). Yet these very same rules designed to ensure impartiality andeditorial independence meant that journalists were forced to rely primarily onsources within the government party, and these sources, in turn, were able toimpose their own interpretation on news events (Tracey 1978: 250). As BrianMcNair (2011) notes, the ways in which the doctrine of impartiality is typicallypracticed works to contain political debate within a more or less tightly drawnconsensus, which admits only an established political class and often marginalisesor excludes others (57 58) (see also the chapters by Jandura and Friedrich andby Hopmann).

This pattern has been discussed in a different context in McNair s chapter inthis volume, where a more detailed discussion suggested that political news tendsto privilege authoritative sources. Indeed, broader studies of sourcing patternsreveal that the most powerful and, in particular, political elites are privilegedin reporting, and that this means that their frames and interpretations will over-whelmingly be the dominant ones. For example, in their classic study of the publicdebate over mugging in the UK, Stuart Hall and his colleagues (1978) demonstrated

that government sources were able to serve as the primary definers who settledthe interpretative framework for stories which all other sources as well as journal-ists secondary definers were forced to follow. In the context of politicalcoverage, resource-rich sources are able to determine what counts as rationalityin any given case, whereas resource-poorer groups are forced to rely on spectacularstrategies and tactics (e.g., Davis 2002; DeLuca and Peeples 2001) (see also thechapters by Stanyer and by Hertog and Zuercher).

One of the recurring questions preoccupying those studying political reportinghas been its ability to influence policy-making and its contribution to agenda-setting (see also the chapter by van Aelst), or to determining what issues the publicthinks are important (see also the chapter by Arendt and Matthes). A closely

related area of research is that of news values research, which has focused on thecriteria by which journalists and their news organizations decide which newsevents to cover, and which to ignore. This area of research was pioneered by JohanGaltung and Mari Ruge, who took up the apparently simple question of how eventsbecome news (Galtung and Ruge 1965: 65). They outlined a set of news values informing journalists selection of stories and angles. Among these, they high-lighted reference to elite people (such as politicians), and suggested that eventswhich are culturally meaningful, already in the news, and unfold within the publi-


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cation cycle of a news medium are more likely to attract coverage. Subsequentscholarly analyses have built on these findings. Among them, Schulz s (1982) workproposed six dimensions of news selections, including status (elite nation, eliteinstitution, elite person), valence (aggression, controversy, values, success); rele-vance (consequence, concern); identification (proximity, ethnocentrism, personali-zation, emotions); consonance (theme, stereotype, predictability); and dynamics(timeliness, uncertainty, unexpectedness) (summarized in O Neill and Harcup2009: 165). Political news especially at the national level fits particularly wellwith such criteria, as a high-status form of news often predicated on controversyand conflict, featuring a high degree of relevance and identification as well aspredictability.

There is some agreement that news values form part of a tacit knowledgewhich is passed down to new generations of journalists through a process of training and socialization (Harrison 2006: 153; Harcup and O Neill 2001); anunspoken set of rules which are learned on the job and become central to journal-ists ways of life. Nonetheless, Peter Golding and Philip Elliott (1999), in theirground-breaking study, Making the News , originally published in 1979, took a criti-cal view of the news values literature. To them, the approach is guilty of embracingthe mythology of journalism, celebrating the novelty, excitement and creativity of covering unknown and breaking news stories: [N]ews production is rarely theactive application of decisions of rejection or promotion to highly varied andextensive material. On the contrary, it is for the most part the passive exercise of routine and highly regulated procedures in the task of selecting from already lim-

ited supplies of information (p. 118).They argued that decisions about news selection derive from assumptions on

the basis of three principal concerns. While the first of these relates to the impor-tance of the story to the audience, the second and third factors purely pertain tothe ways in which the story fits the practical concerns of the news organization:First, accessibility is understood in terms of two factors, prominence and easeof capture. Prominence refers to the extent to which the event is known to theorganization while ease of capture reflects how available to journalists is theevent, is it physically accessible, manageable technically, in a form amenable tojournalism, is it ready-prepared for easy coverage, will it require great resourcesto obtain . Secondly, fit reflects whether the item is consonant with the pragmat-

ics of production routines, is it commensurate with technical and organizationalpossibilities, is it homologous with the exigencies and constraints in programmemaking and the limitations of the medium? Does it make sense in terms of whatis already known about the subject? (Golding and Elliott 1999: 119).

Editorial decisions do not merely reflect the significance of the event, but arealso based on a consideration of limited resources, in the context of a highlyroutinized news production process (e.g., Kepplinger and Ehmig 2006). In politicalreporting, the routinization of news production maps neatly onto the highly pre-


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dictable and routinized schedule of political events, where much of what happenson a typical day is pre-scheduled, from briefings and press conference to majorannouncements and speeches, thus allowing for the careful editorial advanceplanning which is part and parcel of the temporal structure of news production(Golding and Elliott 1999).

Indeed, much journalistic work focuses on careful temporal planning designedto limit the uncertainty of producing news. It could be argued that journalism isoften marked by a stop-watch culture where what is valued is not so muchcreativity, but efficiency and the ability to produce news on a tight schedule (Schle-singer 1987). Ekstrm (2002) commented that journalistic knowledge productionis steered by the demands of predictability and control over the ingredients of aprogramme that has a predetermined format, that will be ready at a given pointin time and that recurs with a certain regularity (often daily) (p. 269).

This is no less true of political journalism, where the pressures of deadlines only strengthened in recent years by the emergence of constantly updated onlinenews and the rise of 24-hour news enforce the long-documented immediacy-orientation of journalism and militate against contextual stories in an area of dis-posable news (Lewis 2010) where the need for speed (Juntunen 2010) dictatesthe terms of political news production. Changing temporal patterns of news pro-duction, in turn, have been alleged to profoundly affect the foreign policy-makingprocess through the so-called CNN effect, as governments are increasinglypushed for immediate and forceful reactions to unfolding news events (e.g., Living-stone 1997) (see also the chapter by Robinson).

Ultimately the most significant consequence of the spatial and temporal organ-ization of news production is that it reinforces practices underwritten by the insider culture of political reporting. First of all, deadline pressures mean thatjournalists rely heavily on a limited number of easy-to-reach authoritative sources.In the case of political reporting, this means relying on known political actors andmedia professionals, rather than seeking out those who operate outside the corri-dors of power. Secondly, the spatial organization of news gathering into a processof beat reporting concentrates resources in specific locations that are likely togenerate news stories and sources who are at the center of these stories such asthe seat of government (e.g., Kavanagh 2011; see also Hess 1981). At the sametime, this organizational model is also likely to leave alternative or oppositional

viewpoints unexplored and outside of reach. Gaye Tuchman (1978: 21 25) thusdeveloped the metaphor of the news net to describe how the system of beatreporting catches the big fish or the sources who have privileged access dueto location and status but lets the tales of less privileged people and groups slipthrough the holes.

Adding to the tight temporal constraints on journalism, other institutional fac-tors also shape political news production. In particular, critics have been alert tothe consequences of commercial pressures, which are shaping the nature of news


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production across the board ( commercialization ). First of all, as discussed above,the downturn in the fortunes of the newspaper industry has resulted in a signifi-cant decline in the financial and human resources of many long-standing newsorganizations at all levels. Secondly, the commercial pressures on news are alsoalleged to shape the nature of political news, resulting in dumbing down, tab-loidization and an increasing focus on scandal and sleaze in political reportingas well as in broader journalistic fields (see also the chapters by Schulz, by Stanyerand by Hopmann). Among the main proponents of these arguments is Bob Frank-lin (e.g., 1997, 2004, 2005), who has criticized the McDonaldization of journal-ism, or what he sees as the increasing dominance of entertaining, pleasing andeasily digestible form of soft news which is, however, insufficiently substantial toprovide citizens with the information that they need in a democratic society. Inthe political arena, such criticisms have often been associated with observationsaround an alleged personalization of politics, or the increasing focus on thepersonal lives of political figures, to the detriment of an emphasis on issues of policy and substance (e.g., Kleis Nielsen 2012; Langer 2012) (see also the chaptersby Aalberg and by Hopmann). This alleged tendency has not necessarily beenconclusively demonstrated in empirical research, but the heated academic debatesover its existence dramatize a set of broader anxieties over the tension between style and substance in political coverage, and also over the shift towards amore entertainment-orientated political culture documented elsewhere in thisbook. Other observers, however, suggest that perceived shifts in the focus of politi-cal reporting towards softer, more emotionalized and entertaining styles, formats

and content may be engaging audiences. For example, the rise of political enter-tainment formats, or what is often described as the new political journalism challenges the conventional seriousness of political reporting and also appearto be energizing new audiences, particularly among younger demographics (seealso the chapters by Moy, Johnson, and Barthel and by Holbert, Hill, and Lee).

Further, the media s focus on political scandal has also, according to someobservers, been seen as both an inevitable consequence of a changing media envi-ronment and as potential benefit for democracy in its heightened scrutiny of theactions of political leaders (Thompson 1995, 2000, 2005). As Thompson (2005)described the process: Political leaders today are more visible to more people andmore closely scrutinized than they ever were in the past, and at the same time,

they are more exposed to the risk that their actions and utterances ( ) may bedisclosed in ways that conflict with the images they wish to project (p. 42).

To Thompson (1995, 2005), the development that he characterizes as the transformation of visibility generates new risks but also new opportunities forpoliticians and audiences. On the one hand, it makes politicians more vulnerableto the exposure of any skeletons in their closets. On the other hand, it providesthem with a far ranger set of opportunities for communicating with their publics(see also the chapter by Shaefer, Shenhav, and Balmas). Nonetheless, in an age of


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mediatization these forms of communication take place according to a

medialogic, which means that political leaders are compelled to tell their story by draw-ing on media-friendly strategies, which involve, among other things, simplifica-tion, stereotypization, polarization and personalization of the message, and anemphasis on horserace elements of the political game (e.g., Altheide and Snow1979; (Strmbck 2008; see also the chapters by Schulz and by van Aelst). Cer-tainly there may also be evidence to support the idea that political reporting isincreasingly focused on the process of politics rather than on substance or policy (Louw 2010), due in large part to processes of mediatization described in thischapter and elsewhere (see also the chapter by Aalberg). Political reporters areboth subjects to these changes and complicit with them; as this chapter has dem-onstrated, they are deeply embedded in their corner of the journalistic field butalso interact in complex and mutually determining ways with the political field.

4 Looking to the future: Emerging trends in thereporting of politics

Overall, these developments suggest that political journalism remains a dynamicand contested area, and one that is currently undergoing profound transforma-tions in terms of both practices and formats. In particular, technological changeis having a profound impact on the working routines of political journalists, whonow have an unprecedented array of information sources at their disposal, butalso face new challenges and pressures. For example, as Ivor Gaber (2011) docu-mented, the working days of journalists covering elections has changed pro-foundly alongside the rise of the digital campaign . This term covers over journal-ists increasing use of new media technologies, particularly social media such asTwitter, to keep abreast of campaign developments. Along those lines, Gaber (2011)distinguished between the conventional or analogue mode of campaign report-ing and the emerging digital campaign practices (see also the chapter by Strm-bck and Kiousis). The traditional analogue campaign day consisted of a series of face-to-face encounters between journalists and politicians on the campaign trail involving pseudo-events (Boorstin 1961) such as the morning news conference, therally, and politicians carefully stage-managed walkabouts and encounters with

citizens in shops, factories, restaurants and streets. By contrast, today s politicalreporter is much more likely to follow the campaign in a second-hand fashion;following live television and radio coverage, Twitter feeds, and online newsupdates, and continually posting their own updates, but spending less time onthe ground in campaigns. This has a number of potential implications for thenature of campaign reporting and its role in democracy. Most importantly, perhaps,has been the decline of the press conference, a traditional campaign fixture. Aspolitical blogger Mark Pack put it:


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This election continued, and accelerated, the death of the morning press conference cycle.They were never perfect means of politicians and journalists interacting, but they did givejournalists the chance to pin politicians down when there was bad news in the air. Withoutthe fixed rendezvous in the diary, it is easier for politicians to dodge journalists and in theend that's bad for politics as it relies on robust, but fair coverage with journalists askingquestions directly of the main players (Pack, cited in Gaber 2011).

In other words, the traditional watchdog role of political journalism may beincreasingly difficult to fulfill under conditions where journalists opportunitiesfor face-to-face interactions with, and questioning of, politicians are circumscribedby technological change and changing news cycles.

The emergence of the digital campaign is, of course, part of a larger trendwhereby new media technologies are shifting the nature of political news produc-

tion away from the insular relationships between journalists and politicians encap-sulated by the Inside the Beltway and Westminster Bubble cultures. Alongthose lines, many scholars and other observers have placed great store in theemergence of citizen journalism and the increasing proliferation of user-generatedcontent, which has promised profound transformations by empowering The Peo-ple Formerly Known as the Audience. If, as Ian Hargreaves (1999) suggested, ina democracy, everyone is a journalist, (p. 4) the ease of producing journalisticcontent has brought this utopian aspiration closer to reality by democratizing theproduction of news content, turning consumers into prosumers (Bruns 2008).Certainly, the ease of producing, publishing and sharing information through venues like blogs and social media has meant that it has become easier than everfor ordinary people to voice their concerns and tell their stories (Stanyer 2009),

and for audiences to access a broader and more global set of voices and viewpoints(McNair 2009). Among other things, social media such as Twitter and Facebookhave been seen to play a key enabling role in the Arab Spring revolutions of 2011 (e.g., Cottle 2011).

Nonetheless, as discussions over developments ranging from Wikileaks touser-generated content have demonstrated (e.g., Wahl-Jorgensen 2012), journalistscontinue to proclaim the importance of their professional status and skill, and thisis also true in the realm of political journalism where reporters, editors and punditshave rushed to the defense of their profession (e.g., Cassidy 2012). These defensivemoves reveal much about the journalism profession s need to justify its existenceat a time profound challenges which appear to shake the profession at its coreand undermine its legitimacy. At the same time, they also point to the fact thatpolitical journalists do possess specialist knowledge and skills which they bringto bear on a rapidly changing communication environment.

5 Conclusion

This chapter has explored key dynamics around the production of political con-tent. It has argued for the analytical usefulness of an understanding of political


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journalism as a subspace within the journalistic field, and one which interacts insignificant ways with the political field. By looking at the production of politicalcontent through such a lens, we can better understand the power relations andworld views produced by the insider culture of journalists and political actors, andits consequences for democracy. Concretely, the chapter has suggested that thisinsider culture affords political journalist privileged access to information, but alsomay hamper their autonomy and the transparency of their actions, and compeljournalists to take for granted the interpretations and world views of politicalactors. Further, the chapter has suggested that the routines and constraints of news production only strengthen this reliance on the views and interpretations of authoritative sources. Nonetheless, technological change may represent a chal-lenge to this insular relationship and the practices which govern it.

Here, it is worth noting that much of the research on the production of politicalcontent is focused on the work of political journalists working at elite, urban andnational news organizations in Western liberal democracies, particularly the USand the UK. This bias is not unique to work on political journalism, but ratherreflects a broader tendency in journalism scholarship whereby the field of studyhas been inescapably entwined with the power relations shaping the practice thatis studied (Wahl-Jorgensen 2009). This is an important scholarly blind spot forseveral reasons. First of all, it is a significant omission because local media are farmore numerous than national ones, widely read and trusted in their communities,and employ the vast majority of the journalistic workforce (Franklin 2006). Moreurgently, the pressures that are affecting the elite news organizations that remainthe focus of the vast majority of scholarly work are felt far more fiercely, and withdevastating consequences, in local and regional media. As local reporters struggleto cover local politics with increasingly scarce resources, the quality of politicalinformation available at the local level is suffering immeasurably (Franklin 2006).Similarly, the focus on the Anglo-American context severely restricts our under-standing of the diversity of journalism cultures, and the recent turn to cross-coun-try comparative research is therefore essential to a better appreciation of the com-plexities of the field (see also the chapter by Pfetsch and Esser). The very partialand limited picture offered in this chapter can only scratch at the surface of thecomplexity of relations between journalists and political actors; a relationshipwhich may shape democracy more than any other.

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