Political Positioning the News and Public Affairs
Agenda setting has been one of the major social implications of the news. Coverage in the news tells the reader what they should be thinking about, what is important. While the news seldom shifts public opinion – it seldom changes the way a reader thinks about an issue – it can set the agenda of issues that a reader believes to be important. This is not always intentional but a consequence of trying to cover the key issues of the day, such as when news about Gaza pushes Ukraine down the news agenda.
A closely related effect is what I would tentatively call ‘political positioning’. [Please suggest a better term or a term already prominent for what I will describe.] In this instance, the news might cover the same issue overtime but from a different political slant. Let me give a few examples.
In today’s FT, Janan Ganesh in an article entitled ‘America’s nightmare is two feral parties’ (5 Dec 2024: 23), he mentions how the ‘tone’ of the coverage of Kamala Harris changed since her defeat to Donald Trump. Indeed. Despite a close election, a close election became a route, what Trump called a mandate for the policies he espoused, even though his popular vote was less than 50 percent of the voters. Kamala went from hero to zero, while Trump swung from zero to hero, almost overnight. The outcome remained the issue but the press quickly swung from Vice President Kamala Harris in a close race with the former president Donald Trump to the victory of Trump and what Harris’ campaign did wrong. Readers are still focused on the outcome of the election, but the press shifted its political positioning – not backing a loser.
Another example is the Ukraine War. The cover of The Economist (November 30th-December 6th 2024) read: “The least bad deal for Ukraine”. To me, this seemed to be a major repositioning of their coverage, moving from the global repercussions of allowing Russia to gain territory from an illegal and brutal invasion of Ukraine to what is the least bad deal for Ukraine. In one simple title, we are told to forget that pledges were made to defend Ukraine for as long as it takes. And we should forget that appeasement in this case could lead to far more proliferation of nuclear weapons as no country could rationally trust the US, NATO, or the West to support the sovereignty of other nations, having fooled Ukraine with such pledges. The context had changed from the election of Trump, who seemed unwilling to support Ukraine and sympathetic to major aspects of Putin’s narrative of the US and NATO provoking the war.
Not all news media succumb to shifting political winds. There are major exceptions. The Financial Times, for example, continued to lead with stories that emphasized the global consequences of appeasement. For example, take the story on ‘NATO chief warns Trump of threat to US if bad peace deal is forced on Kyiv’ (3 December 2024: 1) and another FT story entitled ‘Spy chiefs warn about Russian victory’ (30 November/1 December 2024: 4).
Finally, immediately before the election, the editors of the Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post were influenced by their respective owners not to endorse any candidate, as they were both posed to endorse Kamala Harris. This not only violated clear norms against the owners of American newspapers influencing the editorial pages of the press, but also illustrates the intent to politically reposition the outlet.
Are news media standing up to shifting political events or blowing with the political winds? I thought the political positioning of The Economist was reprehensible, but my major point is that such position shifting might well be as critical as agenda setting in understanding the impact of media coverage. News media need to be held accountable by their readers for the ways they set the news agenda and politically position the issues, as well as for the accuracy of their reporting.
I am probably late to the game, but if the thrust of my argument is correct, then just as candidates, parties, interest groups, and governments seek to shape the issue agenda in their favour, they will also seek to shape the political positioning of the issues. Those who control the political positioning of issues can shape the public’s reception and interpretation of the issues on the press agenda. Those of us watching the watchers need to be as mindful of this political positioning as we are of agenda setting.