Abstract
When and how does press coverage maintain independence from governments’ preferred language? Leading scholarship argues that elites shape media content, especially in foreign affairs settings where journalists rely on official sources. But do media push back in domestic policy contexts? Focusing on immigration in Britain, we find press coverage exhibits signs of autonomy that rely on the state’s administrative branches. Our evidence comes from automated linguistic analysis of 190,000 items of migration coverage in nineteen national British newspapers from 2006 to 2015, and press releases published by the U.K. Home Office between 2010 and 2015. We show that the press increasingly portrayed immigration in terms of its scale. Then, by comparing the dynamics of a key government policy—lowering “net migration”—in press and Home Office rhetoric, we illustrate the limits of the government to insert its desired language into the press. Finally, we argue routine press interactions with the nonpolitical Office for National Statistics enabled coverage that diverged from politicians’ preferred lines. Our study contributes to press-state theory by providing evidence of media semiautonomy in a domestic policy arena, and highlighting the often-overlooked role of routine, bureaucratic procedure in supporting that autonomy.
Highlights
When and how does press coverage maintain independence from governments’ preferred language? Leading scholarship argues that elites shape media content, especially in foreign affairs settings where journalists rely on official sources
We find elements of news coverage that remained independent from political leaders, offering the public a tool to hold government accountable for failing to meet a prominent campaign promise
We show that politically neutral civil servants can play a distinct role in press-state relations, complementing prior studies that cast politicians and politically appointed bureaucrats as primary contributors to the coproduction of news (Ciboh 2017; Cook 1998; Davis 2007; Figenschou et al 2017; Rice and Somerville 2017)
Summary
When and how does press coverage maintain independence from governments’ preferred language? Leading scholarship argues that elites shape media content, especially in foreign affairs settings where journalists rely on official sources. Journalists rely on official government sources, either out of choice or necessity (Cook 1998) In this manner, media coverage becomes “indexed” to power (Bennett 1990), or takes cues from governing elites in a process of “cascading activation” (Entman 2004). Our analysis of British press coverage of immigration shows evidence of media independence We argue this independence is rooted in an underappreciated but theoretically important information source: the administrative arm of the state. Analyzing a comprehensive corpus of British newspaper coverage of immigration, we find sharp growth in discussions of immigration in terms of its scale Comparing these findings to government communications, we find divergence in language between press and policy makers, and signs of media holding government accountable for a major campaign promise (a numerical target for “net migration”). The language of scale increased in the press just when government communications shifted to downplay immigration numbers
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