Comment

It Looks Like There's No Alternative: UK TV News Coverage of the 2008 Budget and the Propaganda Model

John W. Robertson

The crisis in the UK financial sector, a mushrooming cloud in autumn 2008, formed the background for the writing of this Comment and, rather dramatically, confirmed the value of such activity. This Comment is an extract from a larger content and discourse analysis of UK TV news coverage of economic issues in the three weeks (3rd to 21st March) surrounding the UK Budget in March 2008. The TV programmes in the sample covered included: BBC1 News 6, BBC1 Scotland News 6.30, ITV News 6.30, ITV Reporting Scotland News 6, BBC2 Newsnight, BBC2 Newsnight Scotland and a number of other programmes focusing on economic issues with a total viewing time of 56 hours.

In 2008, The Scottish Broadcasting Commission carried out a survey of its viewers and listeners. With regard to TV news, opinion was fairly dissatisfied with particular concern expressed about a lack of context to enable understanding of complex issues and a narrow source range of politicians and spokespeople for corporations. Unlike the UK-wide survey carried out by the BBC Trust in 2007, political bias was not raised as an issue, though judging by the follow-up dialogue on the newspaper website which featured quite heated exchanges around possible bias against the governing Scottish National Party (Leask, 2008), this may derive from the methods used rather than any lack of concern in the population sampled. A quite optimistic account can be found in Cottle and Rai's 2006 study of news reporting in six different global contexts including the UK and India. They argue that: 'there is more going on in the communication of news than the manipulation of news agendas by powerful strategic interests or the circulation of powerful semiotic codes and discourses,'(2006:164). However, the reporting of economic issues does not feature much in their list and evidence of TV news countering powerful interests comes in the contexts of ecology, terrorism and population flows.

Herman & Chomsky's Propaganda Model, reviewed and championed by Jeffrey Klaehn (2004), stands as the 'strong' position on the relationship between media interests and elite interests. For Klaehn, as for Herman & Chomsky, they're the same thing. For John Corner (2003) the position is too 'strong' to be of value in the analysis of European media. He questions whether a model developed in the context of US foreign policy, and admittedly useful in that context, can be applied to domestic affairs in Europe with the latter's quite distinctive political history. A sample of the evidence for the applicability of the Propaganda Model or for its rejection as lacking wider applicability follows.

Cottle & Rai's five conflict frames (dominant, contest, contention, campaigning and investigating) were used here to categorise the results. This is not to deny the value of their consensual frames but rather to enable a sharper focus on the conflict central to economic relations. The order of presentation of the frames and the evidence for them is inverted from that of Cottle & Rai so as to make the narrative more clear in its focus on the presence, or otherwise, of the kind of 'democratic deepening' (2006: 163) they found. Broadly, this inverted form should present the strongest evidence for 'democratic deepening' first.

In the data surveyed here, no reports featured what might be termed Campaigning. Though the 'Green' movement did feature in reports (2), the overall nature of these reports was a clear example of the Contention frame and is discussed below.

Just under 10%, of reports were of an Investigative nature concerning economic or financial matters. Five of the reports concerned the 'extravagant' expenses claims of members of the UK parliament and members of the Scottish parliament and two reported possible misuse of influence by the First Minster of Scotland in a planning decision involving the US billionaire Donald Trump. Reporting of these two issues typically adopted an indignant tone regarding personal morality while asserting the non-criminal behaviour of all concerned and ignoring wider implications regarding inequality. More promising but rather rare in any search for 'democratic deepening' were the remaining two reports investigating the phenomenon of 'cheating' by city traders and income tax avoidance by the 'super rich'.

21 or 20.8% of the economics reports analysed had the key characteristics of the Contention frame. Typical of these reports was the presence of a panel of experts to discuss initial presentations by house journalists, focus groups of 'ordinary' citizens in a home or town hall room, or a sequence of interviews with the latter in the street, in a pub or in another public place. Panels of experts were particularly common and quite extended in length of debate on BBC 2 Newsnight while very short focus groups and street interviews with often only single responses from each member were more common on the evening news bulletins. In itself, this format appears to offer the reasonable possibility of greater complexity and more nuanced argument. However, the latter depends critically on the nature of the plurality offered by the selection of panellists and members of the public. On examination, this range was quite narrow and, with regard to some groups, exclusive.

Most striking was the relative rarity in sightings of trade union representatives. The only occasions where trade unionists were consulted were in 2 out of 101 reports. On the BBC 6 News of 3rd March, a UNISON trade union representative was quoted but not actually presented on the issue of hospital car parking. With regard to the Budget, only Newsnight Scotland on the 12th March gave a few seconds to the convenor of the STUC (Scottish Trade Union Congress) to say that the Chancellor had: 'missed opportunities to relieve poverty'.

More typical, the ITV Budget Special on Wednesday 12th March went quickly to consult their panel of 'city chaps' - three representatives, from the CBI (Council for British Industry), a 'tax consultant' and a 'retail consultant'. BBC2's The Budget on the same day had a focus group in a 'northern' town with the owner of a haulage company, a single parent, a pensioner and a 'green' businessman plus an in-studio panel of 'experts' with BBC economics editor, Evan Davies (author of a book promoting privatisation of public services), BBC politics editor, Nick Robinson (former Conservative Party candidate) and the editor of Moneyweek. The Moneyweek editor, following on from very similar comments from the other two, summed up their common view by saying that she couldn't: 'really see what he can possibly do to improve the lot of people seeing their bills go up'. The impotence of the Chancellor despite his ability to, for example, invest billions in the Northern Rock Bank bailout, to provide billions for the 2012 Olympics or to pay, in billions, for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and yet be unable to invest only millions on social projects was a much-repeated theme across the range of coverage of the Budget.

In almost every case labelled Contention, markedly contentious views were rare. The pre-eminence and dominance of market-oriented perspectives was clear. Very few leftist or state-interventionist views were given space. Developments later in 2008 as states began to effectively nationalise banks lend a little irony to this. Reports coded here as Contest, featuring two participants disagreeing on economic policy made up 33.6% or 34 out of 101 reports.

The most commonly expressed binary conflict was that between global forces and the actions of UK politicians especially the Chancellor. The global forces were expressed in weather metaphors in almost every report on the budget. The ability of the Chancellor to resist these pressures was almost always characterised as very limited. A second binary conflict featuring regularly was that between personal costs such as those for tax, alcohol and fuel and those for public spending on such as child poverty and the health service. This was an important feature of broadcasts on economic affairs, like those above, which suggest a certain inevitability of limited action by political representatives, in that it offers a very simple economic model and presents it as an incontrovertible truth. The truth offered by this model is that higher public spending costs can only be met through higher personal taxation on fuel, alcohol or incomes. So ITV 10 News on the 12th March announced: 'The Chancellor promised to help the aged and to end child poverty but there's a heavy price to pay. If you drink or drive it'll cost you more'. In none of the coverage, not even in extended pieces, was a fuller economic model used. For example strategies such as taxing the profits of the power companies or of the 'super-rich', reducing military spending or allowing failing financial institutions to collapse, were not linked to the economic model.

37 of the 101 (36.6%) economic reports analysed here fell into the Dominant frame category. This was the largest grouping and these reports presented a dominant view, unchallenged. The most obvious example of this tendency and one which startled with its lack of attempt to cloak a lack of balance was BBC2's Daily Politics on 10th March hosted by former Times editor, Andrew Neil. With only one guest, Director of the CBI, Richard Lambert, Neil made no attempt to challenge his guest's opinions but rather prompted him with ideas he could agree with such as: 'You would, I assume, like him [Chancellor] to think again on his changes to Capital Gains Tax'.

Considering the sources, there was a striking selectivity favouring certain groups. The main political parties, employers' groups and top journalists had a massive presence by contrast with representatives of workers or of disadvantaged groups. The socially unrepresentative nature of these top journalists and their integration with other elite groups is marked. Critical Elite frames of the kind developed by academics like Herman & Chomsky, Eldridge or Philo were invisible.

The almost complete homogeneity and partisan nature of the economic explanation offered by UK TV in this period suggests further evidence for the usefulness of Herman & Chomsky's Propaganda Model beyond US foreign policy and into domains such as UK domestic economic discourse.

References:

BBC Trust (2007) From Seesaw to Wagon Wheel: Safeguarding Impartiality in the 21st Century. Accessed in May 2008 at:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/18_06_07impartialitybbc.pdf

Cottle, S. & Rai, M. (2006) "Between display and deliberation: analyzing TV news as communicative architecture", Media Culture Society 28: 163

Corner, J. (2003) "The Model in Question: A Response to Klaehn on Herman and Chomsky", European Journal of Communication 18(3): 367-375

Hermann, E.S. (2003) "The Propaganda Model: A Retrospective", Against All Reason, December, 9th 2003. Accessed in July 2008 at:
http://www.chomsky.info/onchomsky/20031209.htm

Klaehn, J. (2002) "A Critical Review and Assessment of Herman and Chomsky's 'Propaganda Model'", European Journal of Communication, 17(2): 147-182

Leask, D. (2008) "Viewers' Verdict: TV News is too shallow." The Herald, 1.6.8 Accessed in July 2008 at:
http://www.theherald.co.uk/news/news/display.var.2309855.0.Viewers_verdict_TV_news_is_too_shallow.php