Concerning the politician and the media

Abstract

The media is a force that no politician can afford to ignore. Their attention promotes name recognition, which is the key to re-election, assuming that it is positive. If negative, media attention can be the guarantor of defeat come voting time. Since Watergate, every American journalist, blogger, reporter, whatever, has dreamed of winning a Pulitzer Prize for taking out some politician. And the British tabloids are even worse! In short, the media needs to be managed, carefully.

You cannot hope to bribe or twist,

thank God! the British journalist.

But, seeing what the man will do

unbribed, there’s no occasion to.

Humbert Wolfe

“Over the Fire” (1930), The Oxford Dictionary of Political Quotations, Anthony Jay, ed. (Oxford: 1997), p. 393. The absence of tension between any government and the press which reports on it is a fundamental threat to any democracy. A captive press is a useless press.