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has become part of the new political rhetoric. If knowledge is power, then knowledge about
politics should make the exercise of our basic democratic rights including the right to vote, that
much more of a powerful and informed process.
In a media-saturated world where it’s possible to watch news 24/7, what role do the
media, and especially news and current affairs programmes, play in encouraging knowledge
about the political process, a question which has exercised any number of political researchers
down the years (see for example, Negrine (ed.), 1994; Watts, 1997; Wheeler, 1997). The way in
which the journalistic conventions for news works, in an age of personality interviewers such as
Dan Rather and Jeremy Paxman, means that the reporting and representation of politics is more
an interpretive performance rather than a strictly factual activity. It is now less about producing
stories and events which are true or even useful and more about creating a plausible
background against which ’information’ is given, carefully filleted into byte-size pieces for the
polity to consume. To what extent, then, can programmes which engage directly with the public
enhance the political process in ways which are more genuinely participative, and do the
audiences for and callers to such shows, value the particular contribution which such
programmes provide?
Who speaks as the public?
Who is allowed access to the media and who is invited to speak in news and current affairs
contexts is the result of deeply conventional ideas about authority which, at the very least, are
class- and gender-specific and implicitly code ’white male’ as norm. Whose voice is heard and
whose denied, is crucial for a comprehensive understanding of our political world and our
potential for democratic participation. Within the specific context of political journalism,
government spokespeople and officials are more likely to be sought out as sources than other
kinds of political actor (Stephenson, 1998) and those individuals and groups who take a counter-
government position are routinely labelled as disruptive and lawless (Bennett, 1997) and rarely
offered an opportunity to speak. If those anti-establishment voices are also female and/or
Convention