ABSTRACT

The Glasgow Media Group began its research in 1975. In retrospect this can be seen as a high point in the period of postwar social consensus. Harold Wilson, the Labour Prime Minister had initiated the social contract between the government, industry and the unions, which was intended to regulate wage claims and inflation. We showed in our research how television news endorsed the government’s view on this and how the social contract fitted the social-democratic and consensual ethos of television. This ethos with its assumptions about social hierarchies, rights of access for the powerful and the routines of parliamentary democracy meant that broadcasters often viewed extra-parliamentary and grassroots agitation from the unions or the Left of the Labour Party with some suspicion. The purpose of this chapter is to outline subsequent developments in the media and in political communications and to illustrate them with material from our later research. The last twenty years have produced an extraordinary series of changes to our society and to its broadcasting institutions. The fracturing of consensus politics and the dominance of the New Right have been key factors in this. Journalists work within new institutional and legal constraints, while politicians are more than ever concerned to control and package the flow of information into the media. What are the consequences of these changes for an independent and critical journalism? This is by no means an exhaustive account of the period, but there are important tendencies which can be identified.