ABSTRACT
Winston Churchill would not go to bed until the first editions of the daily newspapers were delivered to 10 Downing Street in the early hours of the morning. Today few politicians – from the lowly backbencher at Westminster to the holders of high governmental office – can afford to ignore the print and broadcast media. In a moment of stark honesty Tony Blair, as he prepared to leave Downing Street in 2007, admitted that, ‘we paid inordinate attention in the early days of New Labour to courting, assuaging, and persuading the media’ (Blair, 2007). Politicians may argue that they have the ability to set the news agenda but, in truth, they have little direct control over how the issues on that agenda are covered by the media. There is, as such, an interdependency in the relationship between politicians and journalists, and in few arenas is still as evident than at the Houses of Parliament at Westminster.
