Abstract
Campaign advocacy is a common but rarely researched practice in British tabloid journalism. Newspaper campaigns give an account of ‘public opinion’ to politicians, make explicit claims to speak for ‘the public’ and authentically represent them, and also address readers in an unconventional way in order to recruit their support. This article therefore examines the effect to which agency is attributed to readers and other publics in two such campaigns, and argues that publics were portrayed as active only in relation to the newspaper’s activity, and primarily as reacting emotionally to the problem. The campaigning press promote themselves commercially and politically as quasi-representatives who challenge distant and ‘out of touch’ political representatives with the populist impulses of ‘public’ demands, but without enhancing the democratic process, or publics’ position within it.
Highlights
Campaign advocacy is a common but rarely researched practice in British tabloid journalism
As sources of eyewitness and victim accounts, members of the public are afforded a measure of publicity to contribute a different perspective from the dominant official accounts (Fowler 1991: 16); this agenda-setting role fits within the liberal model, unlike campaign advocacy
Letters to the editor can allow members of the public to contribute to political debate, but findings from the US suggest that letter editors “prefer the emotionally-charged stories of individuals” over overtly political views, which were regarded as a “manipulative discourse” (2001: 311), lacking “sincerity, authenticity and truth” (2001: 313), suggesting a view of politics as intrinsically self-interested and corrupt
Summary
Campaign advocacy is a common but rarely researched practice in British tabloid journalism. Newspaper campaigns give an account of ‘public opinion’ to politicians, make explicit claims to speak for ‘the public’ and authentically represent them, and address readers in an unconventional way in order to recruit their support. Newspaper campaigns give an account of ‘public opinion’ to politicians, make explicit claims to speak for ‘the public’ and authentically represent them, and address readers in an unconventional way in order to draw expressions of support. The key aspect of campaign journalism, is stories about ‘the public’, or stories in which ‘the public’ is attributed some particular opinion, preference or feeling These stories occasionally draw on opinion polls or make reference to ‘vox pops’ interviews, and very occasionally draw on political protest as an indication of ‘public opinion’i, but are most often based on the unsupported inference of the journalist (Lewis, et al 2005). This is of particular concern if journalists make such claims from a position of ignorance
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