The Media Campaign Stephen Ward and Dominic Wring
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View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Loughborough University Institutional Repository 13. Out with the Old, In with the New? The Media Campaign Stephen Ward and Dominic Wring The 2017 General Election will likely be remembered as the campaign where the once dominant forms of TV and print journalism were challenged by digital platforms. This piece analyses this development while also acknowledging that social media networks do not operate in isolation from their more traditional counterparts and content is often shared between them. That said, digital networks did provide Labour Party supporters with significant opportunities to challenge and rebut claims made by the Conservative- dominated press during this campaign. A significant amount of this material focused on the merits (or not) of the two major rival parties and most especially their leaders. In comparison, other politicians received considerably less attention than in 2015. The 2017 media campaign was not expected to showcase the kinds of innovation or generate the many surprises it subsequently provided. Its unexpected calling meant there was minimal time for campaign planning. In media terms, the rival platforms were often portrayed as though they were operating in parallel universes. So- called traditional media, especially newspapers, were seeking to appeal to older core voters and seen as relentlessly negative, anti-Jeremy Corbyn and pro- Conservative. By contrast, social media was viewed as a vibrant sphere dominated by young, left-leaning voices with a heavily pro-Corbyn agenda. In the aftermath, it could be argued that 2017 marked a watershed moment, one where social media finally proved its electoral worth and the power of the press was significantly challenged. Intriguingly, the media election was not, however, solely characterized by innovation given it too would hark back to an era of two party politics. Thus the campaign proved to be a highly presidential affair dominated by both of the main parties and their leaders. These factors will be in turn considered in assessments of the role and nature of traditional, as well as social, media in this election. 1. ‘Strong or Stable’? The Tories’ Communication Malfunction It came as a shock when, shortly after the UK had agreed to invoke Article 50 to leave to the EU, Theresa May reneged on her earlier promise and called the General Election for 8th June. Although a surprise, the Daily Mail welcomed this as an opportunity to ‘CRUSH THE SABOTEURS’, a reference to parliamentarians opposed to Brexit (Daily Mail, 2017a, p1). Unfortunately for May, the supportive media coverage and consistent polling leads she had enjoyed since entering Downing Street were about to come to a dramatic end. May’s limitations as a communicator were exposed during the election. Her apparent discomfort and even robotic style became self-evident in the way she repeatedly recited the party’s initial advertising strap-line ‘Strong (and) Stable Leadership in the National Interest’ during her opening campaign appearances. Later, forced to deny she had performed a ‘u-turn’ over her manifesto’s so-called ‘dementia tax’, the ‘Maybot’ was increasingly criticised by media commentators and satirists who recycled the ‘strong and stable’ phrase to mock her (Crace, 2017). The Prime Minister remained the overwhelmingly dominant face of her party in news coverage terms (Scammell, 2017). The two rivals for the premiership dominated reporting of this campaign (Table 13.1). Significantly, in percentage terms the Tory leader featured twice as much in reporting of the election as her predecessor David Cameron had in 2015 (Deacon et al., 2015). That Cameron had, like May this time, been the single most prominent politician two years before underlined the even more highly personalised, presidential nature of the 2017 campaign. Table 13.1: Most prominent politicians (TV and print news appearances) Rank Politician % items 1 Theresa May (Con) 30.1% 2 Jeremy Corbyn (Lab) 26.7% 3 Tim Farron (Lib Dem) 6.8% 4 Nicola Sturgeon (SNP) 3.7% 5 Boris Johnson (Con) 3.6% 6 John McDonnell (Lab) 3.4% 7 Paul Nuttall (UKIP) 3.4% 8 Amber Rudd (Con) 2.8% 8 Diane Abbott (Lab) 2.8% 10 Emily Thornberry (Lab) 1.8% Source: Deacon et al., 2017a, p7. Despite her media prominence Theresa May refused to appear on live television alongside her rivals. Her strategists likely calculated that the Conservatives’ substantial lead in the polls meant the Prime Minister had little to gain from participating in face-to-face debates (Coleman, 2017). Although initially uncontroversial with most colleagues, May’s risk-averse decision might not have been so harmful to her reputation had other aspects of the ensuing Conservative campaign not proven so problematic. The Prime Minister explained her refusal to appear in leader debates was because she preferred to ‘get out and about and meet voters’ (BBC, 2017). But this claim was visibly undermined when May was subsequently filmed knocking on a door and failing to elicit any response from the occupant. When the Prime Minister did spontaneously converse with a voter in Oxfordshire it proved an uncomfortable experience in which she listened to complaints about government funding cuts to disability care (Shaw, 2017). Both embarrassments highlighted the obvious limitations of interpersonal campaigning, not to mention May’s stated reason for not participating in a media opportunity that would have reached the largest possible audience of voters. May’s refusal to participate in face-to-face leader debates rendered her open to the charge she was seeking to avoid proper democratic scrutiny. This perception was reinforced by carefully controlled ‘public’ appearances in which she spoke in front of supporters holding Conservative placards. This now familiar, but somewhat staid format, was increasingly criticised by journalists keen to cross-examine politicians about live stories rather than passively listen to their pre-scripted messages (for an earlier critique of this see Oborne, 2005). This tension was palpable in the questioning of a seemingly panicked May about her so-called ‘dementia tax’ in what was intended to be another routine controlled appearance soon after the party’s manifesto launch. Elsewhere even straightforward queries from a local reporter in Plymouth were met with stock responses from the Prime Minister during an awkward interview where the journalist likened their encounter to ‘a postmodern version’ of popular BBC radio comedy programme Just A Minute (Blackledge, 2017). Once the Prime Minister’s credibility had been questioned, particularly over the Conservatives’ apparent manifesto ‘u-turn’, every aspect of her self-promotion was more readily challenged. Her appearance on supposedly ‘softer’ interview programmes did not necessarily convey the impression she might have hoped. On primetime BBC1 magazine style The One Show May and her husband Philip digressed into talking about who did the ‘boy jobs’ and ‘girl jobs’ at home. Similarly, when ITV journalist Julie Etchingham asked the Conservative leader what was the ‘naughtiest’ thing she had done in her life, her surreal response was to admit to once running through a field of wheat when she was younger. The light-hearted questioning elicited responses that were further gifts for satirists and also offered a demonstration of how even the most seemingly innocuous queries could help undermine a politician’s image as a credible figure. 2. For Many Audiences Not a Few Journalists: Labour’s Media Strategy. There was a marked consensus among the expert ‘commentariat’ that Labour was on course for a major defeat in this election. The Financial Times’ political correspondent summed this up when he suggested: ‘One thing is certain: this is going to be a very bad election for a divided Labour Party and a weak Mr Corbyn’ (Payne, 2017). The reasons for the impending landslide defeat were the supposedly ineffectual Jeremy Corbyn, the party’s ‘lurch to the left’ and its alleged lack of credibility on key issues. Corbyn’s leadership abilities had been constantly questioned since his elevation to the post and were once again challenged on ITV’s Good Morning Britain only hours before the election was announced. Interviewer Piers Morgan compared his guest to Arsene Wenger, the beleaguered manager of their favourite football team Arsenal, in suggesting he too might want to consider his position so that the team could recover and progress. The ensuing General Election would prove to both a liberating period, as well as a turning point for the Labour leader. The campaign Jeremy Corbyn led confounded expectations, particularly among his many critics in the media, which had even included Labour-leaning newspapers such as the Guardian and Mirror. As the election progressed they were the only dailies that supported the party, as Table 13.2 shows. The overwhelming majority of national newspaper coverage remained trenchantly hostile towards Labour, rather than favourable towards the Conservatives. Table 13.2: Political allegiance and circulation of daily national newspapers, May 2017 Print Title Declaration Circulation Unique online browsers Daily Mirror Labour 0.65 5.41 Daily Express Conservative 0.38 2.05 Daily Star No declaration 0.43 1.02 The Sun Conservative 1.58 4.96 Daily Mail Conservative 1.44 15.37 Daily Telegraph Conservative 0.48 4.78 The Guardian Labour 0.15 8.47* The Times Conservative 0.46 Paywall I No declaration 0.27 6.58 (NB independent.co.uk) Financial Times Conservative 0.20 Paywall Sources: Mayhew, 2017a; Mayhew, 2017b; Ponsford, 2017. Note: *denotes figure for April This, however, temporarily changed during the hiatus over the ‘dementia tax’ when the focus of criticism briefly switched to the Tories, as Figure 13.1 demonstrates (see ‘Week 3’). Nonetheless the overwhelming bulk of commentary in the press was negative rather than positive, and most of the negative was overwhelmingly directed at Labour.