Westminster Tales: The Twenty-first-Century Crisis in Political Journalism

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Description

Politics today is inextricably bound to the media, indeed it is now a routine assumption that the media can determine election outcomes. Consequently, over the last twenty years, the conduct of politics has become increasingly driven by what might "play well" on television or in the press. Election campaigning, budgets, party platforms, and even the contents of legislative bills are dominated by media considerations.Westminster Tales explores how that relationship works in practice. What sort of deals are done between politicians and journalists What tactics do politicians use to try and manipulate the media What are journalists' techniques of resistance What determines how a campaign is put together Have policy issues and the national good really been surrendered to image-making and sound-bite tacticsBarnett and Gaber examine the modern process of political communication through the eyes of the many actors now involved. Through their own experiences, and through personal interviews conducted with many of the key media and political figures, they construct a vivid picture of how political communication is managed today and the direction in which it is going.

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"Because Steven Barnett and Ivor Gaber both know a lot about British broadcasting, another strength of their book is its useful account of the major political broadcasting controversies of the 1990s." --The Times Higher Education Supplement

Author Bio

Professor of Communications at the University of Westminster, UK, who has specialized in media policy and politics for more than 20 years. Steven Barnett is Professor of Communications at the University of Westminster, UK, and a prominent writer and broadcaster who has been involved in policy analysis at the highest levels, both nationally and internationally, for the last 25 years. Steven Barnett is senior lecturer in communications at University of Westminster, and the author of three books on the media. Ivor Gaber is Professor of Journalism at the University of Sussex, UK. He is an internationally acknowledged expert on the relationship between politics and the media. Before entering academia he was a political journalist at the BBC, ITV, Channel Four and Sky News and is now an Independent Editorial Adviser to the BBC Trust.