Dynamics Of Mediatization by Olivier Driessens Göran Bolin Andreas Hepp & Stig Hjarvard

Author:Olivier Driessens, Göran Bolin, Andreas Hepp & Stig Hjarvard
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Springer International Publishing, Cham

8.7 Vulnerability: A “Clear Run” for Labour

The failure to take media change seriously before 1997 effectively gave Labour a “clear run” at reform, allowing them to bring into government their own nimble and aggressive 24-hour strategic communications operation and use it as a basis for reconfiguring the service to suit their needs. This required a draconian attitude towards the existing government information service, especially those on the news frontline, about whom Labour had already formed a “poor opinion”, having “run rings round it while Major was still Prime Minister” (Negrine 2008; Seldon 2005: 301). The outward form of the service remained the same, but internally there were major changes: within two years, almost the entire leadership of the government information service was replaced, and as the number of special advisers doubled, substantive and permanent changes in the terms of engagement with news journalists came into effect (Franklin 2004; Oborne 1999; Public Administration Select Committee 1998).

A senior civil servant at Number 10 until 1998 described the changes as a form of politicization “in the sense that special advisers… were very much more active in dealing with press relations than their predecessors had been” and of mediatization because “they had a very sophisticated media operation. Very rapid response geared to being 24/7” (CS2). A Number 10 press officer who later became a departmental Director of Communication flourished in the post-1997 atmosphere but recalled the poisonous atmosphere in many departments where “you had the special advisers whispering into the minister’s ears saying ‘this lot are not really supporting you’” (CS3). One departing Director of Information was described by a special adviser as “dead meat”, a comment which found its way into the tabloid press (Public Administration Select Committee 1998). A departmental press officer, who joined in 1999, after the initial “cull”, witnessed its aftermath:Slowly they were shuffled out (…) there was a head of news that had been there for quite a while, a lovely woman, but somehow, she was shuffled out against her will and they brought in a journalist who’d worked for a left-wing newspaper to replace her (CS4).

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