Memorandum by Professor Ralph Negrine,
Professor of Political Communication, Journalism Studies, University
of Sheffield
PREAMBLE
It goes without saying that the current "expenses
scandal" will overshadow British politics and Parliament
for some time to come. Although we cannot anticipate the changes
that will come about as a result of the "scandal", it
is possible to argue that it offers us an opportunity to reflect
on whether Parliament and the way it has organised its business
in the past needs to change. Some of the reforms that have been
suggested, eg fewer members, different ways of conducting business
(use of "normal" language, better attendance, a "business-like"
approach to legislation and discussion), reflect a view that these
institutions need to become more "modern" and suited
to governing in the 21st century. If one adds to this the view
that those in Parliament have consistently failed to resolve society's
problems, then the current levels of disengagement and disenchantment
with politics could be soundly justified: there is, in other words,
a systemic failure that must be addressed if citizens are ever
going to want to be engaged with the political process and Parliament
must find ways of redefining its role so that it becomes more
relevant to citizens.
If reforming Parliament is a prerequisite to salvaging
its reputation, part of that reform must address the question
of Parliament's competence: What does it do? Why is it important?
Are its practices suited to contemporary needs? Is what it does
relevant? To take a contemporary example—discussed further
below—how does the work of the Lords Committee on Communications
contribute to informing the public, to legislation, to reform
of institutions and practices? While one could argue that the
work of the Committee has an intrinsic value—it sheds light
on topics, etc...—is that enough justification for the resources
it consumes? Has it been asking the right questions? How has the
public/ the citizen helped shape its agenda? How does it feed
into the legislative process? And so on.
A concern with "connecting with the citizen"
must thus confront the question of why the citizen would want
to connect with Parliament in the first place. There are no easy
answers but simply assuming that the citizen should, takes far
too much for granted. If citizens have confidence in the system,
they do not necessarily need to continuously "connect"
or "engage", though they need to know how to connect
and how to engage; on the other hand, if citizens do not have
confidence in the political process, tinkering with parts of it
will not restore that confidence nor make them keener to connect
or engage. In both cases, though, we take it for granted that
the citizen should be able to gain an insight into what Parliament
does before making any judgements about it or the work that it
does. However, as the next section suggests, the citizen can no
longer simply rely on the mainstream media for information on
what goes on in Parliament. Which is why the discussion about
the ways and means of communicating with the public becomes so
important.
COMMUNICATING THE
LORDS
In an increasingly fragmented media environment,
it becomes more difficult to judge what media of communication
are best suited for the dissemination of information about institutions
such as the Lords. Traditionally, the public/citizens relied on
the mass media of press and television and whilst these continue
to play a significant role in the dissemination of news and information,
they have now been joined by newer forms of communication via
the internet and mobile phones that can either supplement the
mainstream media (msm) or replace them altogether. In which case,
citizens can either rely on the msm for news and information and/or
seek out that information from a variety of other sources, primarily
via the web. Put differently, the citizen can now determine how
he/she chooses to access news and information and need not rely
on the msm to inform him/her of what is going on.
The challenge for political institutions is to ensure
that the citizen is aware of what the institution is doing so
as to enable him/her to gain access to the information wanted.
(This assumes that there is an interest in such information or
a desire to seek it out.) Relying on the msm for signals of what
their Lordships are doing is unlikely to be of much use. Research
into the coverage of parliaments has generally shown that the
msm are only or mainly interested in items that they deem to be
"newsworthy" and that they are unlikely to deal in the
details of institutional work, be it a committee, a debate, a
piece of legislation. More generally, the media coverage of parliaments
has declined quite dramatically—certainly as compared with
the 1960s and 1970s—and there is a paucity of political
parliamentary information to be found in traditional media outlets.
The issue for a body such as the Lords—though this problem
is not unique to the Lords—is how to alert citizens to what
is going on; relying on the mainstream media is clearly not enough.
To demonstrate this point, I searched the Lexis
Nexis news database in order to find out on how many occasions
the House of Lords Communications Committee was reported in national
newspapers in the recent past. The choice of this committee was
not accidental: first, it is a committee in which I am interested;
second, it is a committee that would normally attract the media
since it deals with the media itself. The appended charts (Chart
1 and 2 in Appendix) show that the first reference to the committee
was on 25 March 2007 and between then and April 2009, there were
only 30 news stories. These stories were not necessarily on similar
topics; neither were they necessarily clustered around particular
events, though some obviously were, eg around discussions of ownership
or the BBC. The rest were randomly distributed, and in some months
there was only one published news item.
The point I wish to stress here is that had
I wanted to know what the committee was doing—when it was
sitting, when reports were published, and so on—it would
have not been wise for me to simply rely on the mainstream media
as a source for that information. If one then generalises from
this point, one can only surmise that the msm do not offer any
more than an occasional glimpse of the work of institutions such
as the Lords (although the Commons fares better than the Lords,
it too has similar issues). Significantly, and this is something
that other bodies may need to consider, having RSS feeds or being
on a email list alerts people to what is going on without going
through the msm. Such feeds offer direct means of communication
with those who are interested and those who may be interested.
It is pushed out to those who (might) seek it.
In such circumstances, it becomes easy to see
that one of the tasks of Parliamentary bodies is to find ways
of being open and transparent and proactive in communication strategies.
This can mean many things but in practice it means finding ways
to push out the information so that others can find it easily
and/or can come across it easily (even if only by accident). Parliament
now has a more centralised system for dealing with publicity and
communication and it may be a question of enhancing that service
for the dissemination of information more widely and imaginatively
to citizens via the web.
In making these points, this submission has
purposely side stepped some of the questions set out in the "call
for evidence". This has, in part, been deliberate: it is
unlikely that changing rules of coverage, increasing the number
of parliamentary passes, or doing anything else to help the msm
will make them more amenable to providing the Lords (or the Commons)
with more publicity. (My guess is that it is unlikely that recent
changes to the rules of broadcasting from Parliament have led
to more coverage than was available in a comparable period, say,
a decade ago.) The msm work under enormous pressure and recent
cuts in staff, pressures on funding, declining circulations, etc|
only point towards a greater concern with maintaining sales, something
that is not usually seen as following on from "more politics".
If anything, the longer term trend has been towards less hard
news, less politics and more and more soft news. This has been
variously described as tabloidization and is noticeable in the
ways our newspapers are now organised: fewer stories overall in
the main section, even fewer stories on their front pages than
a dozen years ago, more pictures, larger headlines etc|
The interesting question that follows on from
this is whether other "mediators" of news might now
provide a better way of disseminating information and whether
there are ways of enhancing those communication systems. Consider
the example of the HoL Broadcasting Committee discussed above.
Had the committee "employed" a person with a specific
remit to produce brief notes (blogs?) on every sitting, report,
etc| and of actively disseminating that information to potentially
interested audiences—academics, journalists, politicians
etc|—then the information would have been distributed very
widely indeed. Linking to other networks, in other words, may
allow for wider distribution and may be a good way forward since
it feeds into already existing networks.
Using the newer means of communication must
surely be the way forward, more so in those cases where the traditional
media show less and less interest than in the past. Enhancing
the use of the newer forms of communication may provide the interested
citizen with the information that he/she seeks. This is engagement
and connection of sorts. What it does not address, though, is
how to get citizens to that point where they seek information
and wish to connect. The answer may lie in better education, better
education for citizenship, and a greater awareness of how the
decision-making processes in this country function. But the answer
may also lie, as implied in the preamble, in a re-definition of
the role of Parliament and a fundamental review of what it does
and whether it does it in a manner that deals with the needs of
a 21st century society in political, social and economic crisis.
May 2009
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