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Media and Elections
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Rob Burley on Politics and the Media
This course takes the form of a series of questions put to Rob Burley, a political journalist and former Editor of the BBC’s live political programmes. In the first module we ask, “Do traditional media sources continue to play a role in shaping electoral outcomes?”. We follow this in the second module with a question on soundbites, their effects, and their possible future. In the third module, we ask whether Burley’s experience as a political editor bears out the widely held belief that politicians should not be trusted, before turning in the fourth and fifth modules to the subject of political interviews. In the sixth module we ask whether Burley has noticed any changes in politicians’ attitudes towards appearing on political programmes over the course of his 25-year career, before turning in the seventh module to the subject of how digital and social media informs or shapes political programming. In the eighth module we ask: “To what extent does the media play a role in the success or failure of parliamentary parties between elections?”. Then, in the ninth module, we turn to the subject of impartiality in political reporting, and the difficulties of maintaining impartiality in practice. In the tenth module, we ask “How does national political coverage differ in the UK versus the US?”. Then, finally, in the eleventh module, we ask “Why might young people not watch political programmes, and what might be done to remedy this?”. This course provides both conceptual knowledge and a variety of helpful real-life examples for the “UK Politics: Politics and the Media” section of the A Level exam specifications.
Media and Elections
In this module Rob Burley answers the question: “Do traditional media sources continue to play a role in shaping electoral outcomes?”, focusing in particular on: (i) the “Partygate” scandal; (ii) the influence of traditional media in shaping discourse on social media; (iii) the influence of traditional media sources on perceptions of politicians and parties, e.g. the Daily Mail and Penny Mordaunt during the 2022 Conservative leadership election.
Hi, I'm Rob burly. I am a political journalist in television and radio.
00:00:05I've been doing that work for over 25 years.
00:00:10Traditional media remains really important,
00:00:13I think is an exaggeration about how social media has replaced, uh,
00:00:15more traditional broadcast and newspaper media in terms
00:00:21of impacting politics that they still remain very,
00:00:24very important.
00:00:27To give an example, the party get affair,
00:00:27which was a very important political moment for the Boris Johnson administration.
00:00:30The stories that led to that story happening were
00:00:35broken by ITV News and by the Mirror,
00:00:38the traditional newspaper and broadcast outlets.
00:00:42So they still remain very important for breaking stories also for
00:00:45creating narratives that other media like Social Media might take on.
00:00:50I mean, for example,
00:00:56it's the majority, or a large number of clips we might see on Social media,
00:00:57which are political in their nature,
00:01:01come from tradition from from traditional broadcast media in the first place.
00:01:04So you'll see, uh,
00:01:08interviews or exchanges and moments that have taken
00:01:10place on television repurposed important social media,
00:01:13also in terms of the way in which a, uh,
00:01:17the public perceive a particular politician or party.
00:01:20Traditional media remains incredibly, incredibly important.
00:01:23The six o'clock news or the 10 o'clock news remained
00:01:27the place where most people who only take a sort of
00:01:30passing interest in politics will find information about politics and form
00:01:33their own opinions about the policies or the personalities involved.
00:01:37So it remains really important for the
00:01:41political class to interact with and have on side the broadcast media and,
00:01:44more pertinently, to be inside
00:01:51the press. So
00:01:54we've seen examples. For example, in the conservative leadership contest of 2022
00:01:55there was what seemed like a concerted effort to use the daily mail
00:02:03to damage the candidacy of Penny more than one of the candidates.
00:02:06Clearly, it was driven by
00:02:11the editorial approach of that newspaper,
00:02:13and it had an impact on whether whether she
00:02:16became leader of the Conservative Party and prime minister,
00:02:18which in turn has an impact on the electoral outcomes.
00:02:20So I think the reality is that while
00:02:24the days of everybody watching the same thing on TV,
00:02:28that because of only three channels or four, as was the case many years ago,
00:02:32have long gone.
00:02:36But much of the content and much of the narrative and story that
00:02:37you hear about politics actually still derives from or is influenced importantly,
00:02:40by traditional media.
00:02:45One thing that television can produce, which is sort of underestimated is drama.
00:02:47Uh, in a political setting, drama is powerful.
00:02:52So what I mean by that is moments that take
00:02:56place on television between politicians or about political issues.
00:03:00Or can't even comments are made by members of the
00:03:03public to politicians or about politicians can create dramatic,
00:03:05have a dramatic impact that landed with people and that sticks in their mind.
00:03:08So these things all add up to an impact from the traditional broadcast
00:03:13media that we shouldn't ignore or regard as being something of the past,
00:03:17that these things are still important.
00:03:22
Cite this Lecture
APA style
Burley, R. (2022, August 15). Rob Burley on Politics and the Media - Media and Elections [Video]. MASSOLIT. https://massolit.io/courses/uk-politics-rob-burley-on-politics-and-the-media
MLA style
Burley, R. "Rob Burley on Politics and the Media – Media and Elections." MASSOLIT, uploaded by MASSOLIT, 15 Aug 2022, https://massolit.io/courses/uk-politics-rob-burley-on-politics-and-the-media