television, plus the flatness of the race, with perpetually large
Labour leads, as well as the reputation of the polls following their
fiasco in 1992. Overall there was relatively little difference in
the amount of attention given to each party in terms of
electioneering, although it is notable that more stories about the
Liberal Democrats focussed on stories about tactical voting, such as
The Observer’s detailed survey of marginal seats towards the end of
the campaign, and this coverage may have influenced the high levels
of tactical voting which were evident in the results.
Almost half of all the press coverage (45 percent) discussed policy
issues (see Table 4), with detailed sections in the broadsheets
analysing the contents of each party’s manifesto promises. About one
quarter of this coverage (27 percent) focussed on problems of
domestic social policy, particularly education, the national health
service, pensions and crime. The priority given to education by
Labour, and even more by the Liberal Democrats, seems to have paid
dividends in their media coverage. The economy absorbed another
quarter of the coverage, particularly taxation, trade unions (for
Labour), unemployment and privatisation, in that order. The analysis
clearly reveals the extent of the failure of the Conservatives to
focus media attention on their positive achievements. There was
remarkably little political coverage of Britain’s low levels of
inflation, the balance of payments figures, strong economic growth,
and low interest rates, not to speak of the booming stockmarket27.
Altogether economic and social policy absorbed the majority (58
percent) of Labour’s issue coverage, broadly reflecting their
manifesto priorities, particularly the five specific policy pledges
mentioned earlier. In terms of agenda-setting, the only major topics
given significantly more attention in the press coverage than in
Labour’s manifesto were the issues of trade unions and
privatisation. In contrast, despite John Major’s strenuous attempts
to trumpet the government’s economic record at daily press
conferences at Smith Square, and their BRITAIN IS BOOMING slogan,
only a fifth (22 percent) of their issue coverage in the press
focussed on the economy. The Conservatives simply failed to set the
media agenda: there was twice as much coverage of their record on
unemployment as inflation.
In most elections foreign policy rarely surfaces as a major issue,
unless the country is at war or there is major international
conflict abroad. During the 1992 campaign, for example, although
Labour’s defence policy was highlighted by Tory posters, foreign
affairs occupied a mere one percent of front page news28. Yet in
1997, despite an era of peace and prosperity, at a time when the
west has won the cold war, a remarkable 17 percent of all issue
coverage in the press focussed on foreign policy, nearly all
concerning Britain’s role within the European Union29. As discussed
earlier, the press headlined Conservative splits over Europe: almost
a fifth of the coverage of Conservative issues (19 percent) focussed
on Europe.
The Conservative agenda was also sabotaged by the issue of standards
of public life: 18 percent of their total issue coverage in the
press concerned stories about sex and sleaze. This was also the
number one topic in editorials30. The extent to which the
Conservatives lost the battle of the media agenda can be illustrated
most clearly by this issue. The first week of the campaign was
dominated by the ‘cash for questions’ row when part of the
unpublished Commons report by Sir George Downey was leaked to The
Guardian on 21st March. As a result 23 Conservative MPs entered the
election with a cloud over their heads, notably Neil Hamilton in
Tatton and Tim Smith in Beaconsfield.
During the second week, the Tories started to mount a
counter-offensive: both the Daily Mail and the Daily Telegraph led
with a splash story about the ‘union threat’ under Labour, with the
Mail publishing a ’secret union hit list’ of employers. Conservative
Central Office tried to lead their press conference on this story
but before they could gain any traction this news was swept off the
front pages by the resignation of Allan Stewart, an ex-minister and
Conservative MP for Glasgow Eastwood, forced to stand down following
allegation of an old affair which were published in the Sunday Mail.
On Thursday 27th, in a classic case of cheque-book journalism, the
Sun led a scoop with photos of the Conservative MP, Piers Merchant,
caught embracing a “17-year-old blonde Soho nightclub hostess” while
out canvassing in his Beckenham constituency (”SCANDAL OF TORY MP’S
MISTRESS, 17″, the Sun). Even the pro-Conservative Express and Mail
could not resist giving this set-up story front-page coverage, and
it continued to rumble on in the press throughout the quiet Easter
weekend. As if this was not enough, that same day Tim Smith,
Conservative MP for Beaconsfield, confessed to taking 25,000 from
Harrods’s owner, Mohammed Al Fayed, and he stood down from his
candidacy. While the tabloids headlined sex, the broadsheets had
their exclusives based on corruption, with the crusade against Tim
Smith led by The Guardian (”THE DISHONOURABLE MEMBER”), thereby also
renewing pressure on Neil Hamilton in Tatton.
The following week Sir Michael Hirst, chairman of the Scottish
Conservative party, and front-runner for the recently vacated
Glasgow Eastwood seat, had to resign because of allegations of past
indiscretions in his private life. The story first broke in the
Scottish press, but it was reputed to have been planted by
malcontents from within the Scottish Conservative party. Whether all
of these stories were really ‘news’, suitable of headline treatment
in this feeding frenzy, is highly debatable, but the culture of
sensationalism in the British press was by now too well entrenched
to avoid such treatment.
The start of April saw the launch of the official manifestoes, and
more traditional, issue-oriented coverage returned, but by then a
third of the campaign period had been dominated by sleaze. Coverage
reinforced the widespread sense that the government had run its
course, and become faintly disreputable, divided and tired, fuelling
the ‘time for a change’ sentiment. The issue failed to go away since
Neil Hamilton (claiming to be innocent of cash for questions until
proved guilty) refused to resign. John Major refused to intervene in
Tatton, although he had earlier indicated that Piers Merchant
(caught guilty of kissing) should rethink his position in the
interests of the party, a curious choice of priorities concerning
suitable standards in public life, and one not, apparently, shared
by the electorate31.
The ‘battle for Tatton’ made headlines throughout the fourth week
after Labour and the Liberal Democrats agreed to withdraw their
candidates. This allowed the BBC war correspondent, Martin Bell, to
stand, and eventually win, as the first independent MP (without any
previous party affiliation) for fifty years. The soap opera of
Tatton, with all the personal drama of Hamilton v. Bell, was just
too good a news story for any journalists, including those working
for the Tory tabloids, to keep off their front pages. By dissolving
parliament six weeks before polling day, well before the traditional
launch of the manifestos and the formal beginning of the campaign,
Major blundered into creating a yawning news hole into which, like
the White Rabbit, fell the Conservative party. Without policy
conflict, something had to fill the political columns. Throughout
the first two weeks these stories reinforced the image of a
discredited government under weak leadership, the final nails in the
coffin from which the Conservatives never recovered.
Overall CARMA estimated that on balance Conservative coverage was
generally negative (44 percent was rated unfavourable to only 18
percent favourable, with the rest neutral). CARMA confirmed that the
papers most positive towards the Conservatives in their contents,
(reflecting their editorial preferences) were the Daily Telegraph,
the Daily Express, and the Daily Mail32. If ratings are weighted by
the size of circulation of newspaper articles, the government’s
overall disadvantage in the press was even more marked. Labour and
the Liberal Democrat coverage was far more evenly balanced between
positives and negatives.
Lastly, just over a third of all press stories concerned the party
leadership and candidates, which probably represents a substantial
increase on previous campaigns33. Here, as shown in Table 5, most of
the coverage focussed on the two main leaders, with Blair enjoying a
slight edge over Major, while Ashdown trailed far behind (with only
4 percent of the leadership stories). Within the Labour party, Blair
clearly dominated coverage (with 51 percent of stories), followed by
Gordon Brown, John Prescott, Peter Mandelson and Robin Cook.
Ashdown’s dominance of the Liberal Democrat coverage was even more
pronounced, with almost no stories about any other of their
politicians. In contrast only a third of the Conservative leadership
stories focussed on Major. In second place within his party, Neil
Hamilton attracted slightly more coverage than Mrs Thatcher, Ken
Clark or Michael Heseltine. Overall the list is overwhelmingly
masculine, due in large part to the predominance of the three main
party leaders, although women spokespersons were slightly more
prominent in the Labour party. Lastly, the content analysis also
rated the favourability of the coverage of the leaders, and here
coverage of all the Conservative leaders (with the single exception
of Norma Major) was on balance classified as unfavourable, with
particularly poor ratings of Tim Smith, Neil Hamilton, Stephen
Dorrell and Michael Forsyth, while the equivalent coverage of the
Labour leadership was generally neutral.
The Impact on Voters
Lastly, if political campaigns in Britain are moving towards the
post-modern era, what impact did this have on voters in the 1997
election? How did viewers react to the campaign coverage on
television, in particular did they reach for their remotes to turn
off, or turn over, from news and current affairs on television? And
did viewers feel that the election coverage was interesting,
informative and fair? Here we can monitor viewership figures using
data supplied by the Broadcasters Audience Research Board (BARB),
which provides the industry-standard measure of viewing behaviour
from a panel sample of over 4,000 monitored households.
The evening news and current affairs programmes on British
television continue to reach a mass audience, but the availability
of alternative channels has slightly eroded their market share.
Commentators noted that BBC1’s Nine O’clock News suffered
particularly sharply from a fall in viewership after it was
specially extended with campaign news to 50 minutes after Easter.
The BARB figures confirm that this programme lost one third of its
viewers, down from 5.8 million in the first week to 4 million
thereafter (see Figure 2). This figure was also well down from the
equivalent during the spring 1992 campaign, when about 6.3 million
viewers tuned into BBC1’s main evening news. But what commentators
failed to notice was that ITN’s News at Ten, with its regular 30
minute slot, also steadily lost some of its audience during the
campaign, down from 6 million in the first week to 5.6 million in
the last. Channel 4 News at 7pm (with 0.6 million viewers), ITV’s
Early Evening News at 5.45pm (with 4 million) and BBC1’s 6pm News
(with 5.8 million) remained popular and relatively stable, subject
only to the natural trendless fluctuations caused by the television
schedules.
Current affairs programmes also experienced fluctuations in their
audiences (see Figure 3). The sharpest fall was registered by BBC1’s
Panorama which carried interviews with all the major party leaders
(with an average viewership of 2.8 million throughout the campaign),
although they also picked up towards the end of the campaign. A
similar pattern was registered with Question Time (2.8m), while
BBC1’s On the Record (1.5m) managed a modest and steady rise during
the campaign. Among the special programmes the BBC’s 9am Election
Call gathered about 0.6m television viewers, but more listened via
Radio 4, and the programme maintaining high standards of public
service broadcasting. ITN’s People’s Election, with a live studio
audience of 500, attracted a stable viewership of about 2.8 million.
On Channel 4 Vincent Hanna’s A Week in Politics (0.8m) and Midnight
Special (0.2m) retained a loyal, if modest, audience of political
aficionados throughout the campaign. The Labour and Conservative
parties showed five election broadcasts each which attracted an
average audience of about 11.2 million across all channels, while
the four Liberal Democrat broadcasts were seen by 10.6 million, and
minor parties were watched by about 10.1 million. None were
particularly memorable, though some aroused minor controversy (such
as Labour’s use of Fitz the bulldog, traditionally seen as a symbol
of the far right BNP, and a Pro-Life film featuring graphic footage
of abortions). The ratings were well down on 1992, when PEBs
averaged about 13 million viewers34.
On election night, at its peak (at 10.45 pm) 12.7 million people
tuned into the election specials, or almost one third of the
electorate. While the news of Labour’s landslide started to sink in
across the nation, the BBC experienced an equivalent landslide of
viewers against ITV, by a ratio of about 7:3. The numbers gradually
subsided but even so 5.2 million remained glued to the set at 1.45
in the morning, as Tory after Tory faced the end of their political
careers, and between 1.4 and 6.3 million watched bleary-eyed all the
next day as Blair went to the Palace, then emerged triumphant to
enthusiastic throngs in Downing Street. We can conclude that popular
commentary exaggerated how far the public turned off from the
election, and, although BBC1’s Nine O’clock News suffered more than
most during the first week of the campaign, the pattern after then
was relatively stable. Since, as mentioned earlier, about ten hours
of news and current affairs was available every day throughout the
campaign, and since the horse-race was flat almost throughout, this
represents a remarkable achievement for television broadcasters.
Yet viewing figures may provide a poor indication of interest, since
the size of the audience for news and current affairs is strongly
influenced by the placement of a programme in the schedule. For more
information about viewer’s reactions we can turn to data from the
four-wave panel survey, Television: The Public View with 15,356
viewers conducted before, during and after the campaign by RSL for
the Independent Television Commission. The public were asked to
evaluate a range of factors in television’s coverage of the
campaign.
As shown in Table 6, the results confirm that the public felt there
was far too much coverage of the general election, as many
television reviewers suggested. Nevertheless a more accurate picture
is more complicated. While a clear majority (60 percent) agreed that
there had been far too much about the campaign on television,
nevertheless a quarter of the public thought that there had been too
little, and few felt that broadcasters had got the balance right.
This pattern may have important implications for future elections as
British broadcasting moves into a more diverse digital media
environment. A multiplicity of channels will make it far easier for
some to tune out from politics, while other political junkies will
be able to watch 24-hour news.
If we turn to coverage by different channels, contrary to the
conventional wisdom, Sky News (with Adam Boulton’s rolling live
campaign) and ITV were most widely criticised for providing too much
coverage, while the public seemed more satisfied by the BBC
scheduling. Despite the decline in coverage of opinion polls noted
earlier, the public still felt that there was far too much attention
to the horse-race on television. Outside pundits were also unpopular