Members of Parliament: Equal Competitors for Media Attention? An Analysis of Personal Contacts Between MPs and Political Journalists in Five European Countries

Abstract

Power relations between politicians and journalists are often depicted as an ongoing tango with one actor leading the other. This study analyzes interactions between politicians and journalists not by posing the question of who leads whom, but rather by investigating which politicians are invited to dance in the first place, and which are better positioned to take the lead. Building upon theories and past research into press–government relations, comparative politics, and an economic perspective on journalist–source relations, three groups of hypotheses on a personal, party, and political system level are derived and tested using a unique survey with members of parliament (MPs) in five democratic corporatist countries (Belgium, The Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, Denmark). The results display a similar pattern in all five countries where parliamentary experience and institutional position increase the frequency of contacts that MPs have with journalists. While these party variables have a more modest influence on the frequency of contacts, it is also shown that there are clear differences between countries attributed to parliament size in general and higher inter-MP competition in particular.

Keywords:

• press-politics relations
• media power
• members of parliament

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Erratum

Notes

1. See European Journalism Centre (ejc.net/media_landscape) and Freedomhouse (http://www.freedomhouse.org).

2. The responses of the MPs of these three parliaments were not significantly different on the questions on their contacts with journalists.

3. If one mainly looks, as Lijphart (1999) does, at the duration of the cabinet as an indication of power of the parliament, then the Belgian parliament receives a higher score, but in combination with the powers of government over parliament (such as the possibility of governments dissolving parliament and ignoring the loss of a vote of confidence) they hold a weaker position than the other four parliaments.

4. The political journalists in the five countries were asked to place themselves on a 10-point left–right scale. The average score in all countries ranged from 3.9 (Belgium) to 4.9 (Denmark). In none of the countries did more than 5% of the journalists place themselves on the far right of the political spectrum (score of 8–10).

5. We included Vlaams Belang (Belgium), Lijst Pim Fortuyn (Netherlands), Fremskritspartiet (Norway), and Dansk Folkeparti (Denmark). In Sweden no extreme right party existed at the time of the survey.

6. By the mid-1980s, 75% of U.S. Congress members were already reliant on a full-time press secretary (Cook, 1989, p. 72).

7. The Belgian survey was only conducted in the Dutch-speaking part of the country (Flanders), containing 60% of the population.

8. The surveys in the five countries were coordinated by Michiel Nuytemans, Stefaan Walgrave, and Peter Van Aelst (University of Antwerp) in Belgium; Kees Brants, Philip van Praag, and Claes de Vreese (University of Amsterdam) in The Netherlands; Arjen van Dalen, Erik Albæk, and Claes de Vreese (University of Southern Denmark) in Denmark; Toril Aalberg and Ann Iren Jamtøy (Norwegian University of Science and Technology) in Norway; and Jesper Strömbäck and Adam Shehata (Mid Sweden University) in Sweden.

9. In The Netherlands, the data gathering was disrupted by the unexpected fall of the government at the end of June and the subsequent elections in November. Consequently, the data file consists of both “old” and new MPs. Their answers were compared and were not significantly different for the variables used in this study.

10. The principal components analysis produced a two-factor solution (using varimax rotation). Both factors explained 67% of the total variance. Four items showed high factor loadings on the first dimension: overall frequency of contacts, interviews, meetings in the corridors of parliament, and contact over the telephone. Three items showed high factor loadings on the second dimension: contacts during press conferences, receptions, and lunches. The eigenvalues were 3.23 for factor 1 and 1.46 for factor 2. This factor solution proved almost identical within each country apart from two points of difference. First, lunch meetings loaded highly on the first factor in the Belgian case while showing moderate loadings on both factors for Denmark and Norway. Second, meetings in the corridors of parliament loaded much higher on the second factor in the Swedish case. The final “personal contacts” index, based on the first dimension, had the following Cronbach alpha values: Belgium, .82; Netherlands, .86; Norway, .87; Sweden, .82; and Denmark, .80.

11. For instance, in Sweden political journalists confirm that they hardly meet with politicians in the corridors of parliament; on the other hand, they report a much higher frequency of contact with politicians over the telephone than is reported by Swedish MPs. This may indicate that journalists mainly interact with a limited number of top politicians and not with the large number of MPs in their country.

12. Additional tests of potential interaction effects revealed no interactions between political standing (i.e., parliamentary experience and being a chairperson) and whether the MP belongs to a governing or opposition party.

13. The information on initiatives is based on self-reported measures and might, therefore, be biased. However, there are no obvious reasons to believe a tendency to over- or underestimate initiatives varies systematically between the five countries. Furthermore, we also asked the same question to political journalists in the five countries and their answers largely confirm the answers of the MPs. This was especially the case in The Netherlands, where journalists indicate that politicians hardly ever take the initiative, and in Belgium, where one out of four journalists indicate that in most cases politicians contact them more than the other way around.