Using the Media

Abstract

The average British voter is not an enthusiastic consumer of party political propaganda. Few people set their video so as not to miss a party political broadcast, scour the streets for party billboards, or rush to their letterbox when they hear it open and shut in the hope of finding the latest circular from a local candidate. And the rare individual who is an avid peruser of a party’s publicity material is probably a committed supporter and almost certainly not an all-important floating voter.

Television is the greatest, best and most important thing that has happened to British politics.

Tony Benn, 1958¹

We’re not having a party political broadcast. We’re having an interview, which must depend on me asking some questions occasionally.

Sir Robin Day, trying to interview Margaret Thatcher, 1987²

I’ve never understood why the photo opportunity should be criticised even standing on its own, because supposing for example that you have a picture, as the cliché goes, which speaks more than a thousand words, why waste everyone’s time, if they are getting the message very definitely through the picture … and of course you We much more a hostage to fortune of something going wrong if any politician of any party opens his or her mouth.

Harvey Thomas, former Conservative director of communications, 1992³

Happily, it is still a convention that you should say something when you appear on television. But that convention will wither away. One can imagine a time when politicians will simply appear with a suitable expression and a carefully chosen tie and the image will speak for itself.

Douglas Hurd, 1994⁴

Our news today is instant, hostile to subtlety or qualification. If you can’t sum it up in a sentence or even a phrase, forget it. Combine two ideas or sentiments together and mass communication will not repeat them, it will choose between them. … The truth becomes almost impossible to communicate because total frankness, relayed in the shorthand of the mass media, becomes simply a weapon in the hands of opponents.

Tony Blair, 1987⁵