Journalists and quasi‐government in the UK: conflict, co‐operation or co‐option?

Abstract

It is frequently observed that political communication processes related to elections, political parties and the electorally accountable domains of executive authority have entered a period of great conflict. This article widens this debate, by examining journalists' relations with “quasi‐government” bodies—i.e. the myriad of arm's‐length public bodies (often referred to as “quangos”), that are appointed to office and that have colonised many official advisory, regulatory and executive functions. Presenting findings from semi‐structured interviews with 40 UK‐based specialist national and regional journalists, the article demonstrates how even these experienced journalists struggle to cope with the complex and evolving structure of quasi‐government in the UK, and how their attitudes are often highly inconsistent. Although most are hostile towards the broad principle of appointive‐government, their relations with specific public bodies that fall within this rubric are in the main highly co‐operative, and these sources are often deemed authoritative and dispassionate arbiters in the public policy arena. The article concludes by discussing the political implications of the appreciably less conflictive relations evident in the reporting of appointive government.

Keywords:

• Quangos
• Journalism
• Public Relations
• Political Communication
• News Sources

Notes

This empirical work is a component of a larger research programme funded by the ESRC (grant reference: R000236953). My thanks to Wendy Monk for her assistance with interviewing the journalists for this article. An earlier version of this article was presented to the Mass

The sample comprised: five education correspondents, five health/medical correspondents, five media/arts correspondents, five political correspondents, five environment correspondents, five home affairs correspondents, five economics/industrial correspondents and five general correspondents. Eleven interviewees worked for the national broadsheet press, six for the national popular tabloid press, nine for the local press, seven for the national television news and seven for local television news.

This represents a reversal of the order in which these matters were addressed in the interviews.

This was the definition favoured by successive Conservative governments throughout the 1980s and early 1990s and only recognised so‐called Executive Non‐Departmental Public Bodies (NDPBs; established by statute these organisations have their own staff, allocate their own budgets and conduct a range of administrative, regulatory and commercial functions on behalf of the state), Advisory NDPBs (these provide expert advice to ministers on topics of public interest), Tribunals (these have jurisdiction in specialised fields of law) and Boards of Visitors (prison service watchdogs) as quasi‐governmental bodies (see Pliatsky, 1980).

This classification gained favour from the mid‐1990s (e.g. Weir and Hall, 1996), extending the definition of quangos to include the proliferation of local public spending bodies that have either been recently established or whose relations with government have altered due to new contractual arrangements (e.g. grant‐maintained schools, housing associations, higher education and further education bodies, new health service arrangements.) This expanded definition gained the tacit endorsement of the Labour government after its election in 1997, who started to include these sorts of organisations in their reviews of management and accountability procedures in the sector (see Cabinet Office, 2003).

Expansive definitions include all of the above but also extend the classification to include (1) older forms of public bodies that have become less prevalent due to wide‐ranging privatisation programmes (e.g. public corporations and nationalised industries), and (2) new kinds of public bodies that have assumed very important roles in service regulation and provision (e.g. the Next Step Agencies that remain formally part of government departments but are expected to work semi‐independently under the direction of a chief executive, and the various regulators that have been set up to supervise the privatised utilities and other elements of public life) (e.g. Flinders, 1999; Hogwood, 1995).

With 6 per cent of the organisations discussed contact was said to always depend on the journalist making the first move; 1 per cent said it always relied on the quango's initiative; 14 per cent said instances of initiation and response were broadly equal. The remainder of cases (4 per cent) said the situation varied so greatly it was impossible to ascertain a general pattern.

In addition, 8 per cent of the organisations were judged to have reduced their investment in media and publicity. In the remaining 11 per cent of cases, journalists said they felt unable to judge because of the limited time they had been employed in their current specialist position.

There is in fact one Chatham House Rule devised by members of the Royal Institute of International Affairs located at Chatham House: “When a meeting, or part thereof, is held under the Chatham House Rule, participants are free to use the information received, but neither the identity nor the affiliation of the speakers, nor that of any other participant may be revealed; nor may it be mentioned that the information was received at a meeting of the institute”.

The placement of individual assessments on this scale was determined by careful analysis of the detail of journalists' answers. An evaluation of an organisation was assessed as “very high”when the journalist appraisals were unconditionally positive. Minor qualifications or conditions were coded as “high”. Appraisals that were broadly positive but contained some significant reservations were coded as “moderate”. Appraisals that were mainly or solely critical of the authoritativeness of an agency were coded as “low”.