Graham Minenor-Matheson Masters Dissertation Thesis Supervisor: Kristina Riegert
Date of Submission: 12th June 2020.
Word Count: 19,995
“Think tanks and the construction of authority in the UK: ideological representations of private sector knowledge producers in broadcast television news”
Abstract
Private sector knowledge producers, more commonly known as think tanks or research institutes, are used as authoritative sources in Western media either as interview guests or their research quoted by journalists. Most studies have focused on their ability to influence government policy, but very little has focused on their role in the public sphere, particularly their visibility in media. This study will explore how often think representatives appear as authoritative sources or experts in broadcast media during the 2015, 2017 and 2019 UK General Elections. This will be done through a quantitative content analysis and thematic analysis investigating whether such representatives are accorded preferential access and ascribed primary authority to define narratives. Additionally, a theoretical model has been designed to detect whether a marketplace of ideas can be detected or whether television news is a site of Habermassian rational-critical public sphere. Inspired by the work of Anstead and Chadwick, and taking this vital work further, this study investigates whether authority signalling, and primary definition is still a relevant theory by analysing broadcast news coverage across three general elections.
Keywords: think tanks, primary definition theory, authority signalling, broadcast television news, marketplace of ideas, public sphere.
Media Studies Department Masters in Global Media Studies Masters Thesis
Contents
List of Tables and Figures 3
Introduction and Research Aims 4
Background 8
Literature Review 13
Theoretical Framework 16
Method and Materials 25
Content Analysis Results 31
Thematic Analysis Results 40
Testing the Marketplace of Ideas Results 50
Conclusion 59
References 64
Appendix 1 – Coding Data 69
Appendix 2 – Coding Manual 72
Appendix 3 – Summary of Climate Change Coded Segments 74 Appendix 4 – Summary of Spending Plans Coded Segments 88
List of Figures and Tables
Figure 1 - Trustworthiness as important value for news provision 17 Figure 2 - Audience perceptions about quality of news being delivered 17 Figure 3 - Sources of News for UK public 2013-2019 via Reuters Digital 17 News Report 2019
Figure 4 - Multiple mentions or interviews of think tanks by program 33 Figure 5 - Number of think tank mentions or references by channel 34 ownership type
Figure 6 - Number of times think tanks either appear or are mentioned 35 according to topic
Figure 7 - Number of times think tanks either appear or are mentioned 35 according to subtopic
Figure 8 - Number of times think tanks have been introduced as 36 think tanks
Figure 9 - Number of times think tanks were introduced according to 36 their ideological status
Figure 10 - Number of times and who draws on think tank authority 36 according to Anstead and Chadwick's authority signalling
Table 1 – Broadcast news programs sampled for analysis 26 Table 1.1 - Coding Strategy for thematic analysis by Braun and Clarke 28 Table 2 – Think tanks either mentioned or interviewed and their 32 ideological affiliation
Table 3 – Weight of think tank references by ideology 32 Table 4 – Source types interviewed in sample where think tanks 34 also appeared or are mentioned
Table 5 – Themes on spending plans and climate change arising 40 from thematic analysis
Table 6 – Sub-themes of economics and behaviour arising 48 from thematic analysis
Table 7 – Categories of interview types measure in sample where 50 think tanks appear or are mentioned
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Introduction and Research Aims
Private sector knowledge producers, often referred to as think tanks or institutes, have been a part of the public sphere for a little over a century. Since the end of the Second World War, there has been a significant increase in the number of think tanks both in the United States and Britain. Today, there are thousands of think tanks spanning the globe with most being in Europe and the US, however, there has been an expansion in the number of think tanks in Asia, Latin America, Africa and the Middle East. In the US alone there are 1,872 and 2,219 established in Europe, (McGann 2018: 14).
Most scholarship on think tanks has focused on the policy production and influence of think tanks predominantly in the United States and Canada or the hegemonic support for neoliberalism after the recent global recession. Some have focused on the development of think tanks as research institutions while occasional studies have explored think tanks in United States’ media through comparing advocacy over professional norms. Important work on think tanks as lobbying organisations that have outsized networks of influence on government and political policymaking has been conducted by Dinan and Miller, (Dinan &
Miller 2007) however there has been very little analysis exploring think tanks and their role within the public sphere, (Denham & Garnett 1998).
A primary reason for the lack of research within the field of communications, specifically political communication, on think tanks and the media is because much of the focus has been on their core function as policy experts but also because the use of think tanks as experts within media spaces has been a slow and steady increase rather than a noticeable explosion of access. The aim of this research is to fill that gap by exploring how often representatives from think tanks appear as sources or experts within news segments, how journalists or presenters both introduce such representatives and how journalists utilise the knowledge think tanks produce. This will be done through analysing over
through a quantitative content analysis looking to discover if think tanks are being ascribed primary narrative authority by media and if there are differences accorded to explicitly ideological representatives within this subset of knowledge producers. Such organisations are worthy of study for political communication because they act as both producers of
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knowledge and as expert analysts and it is hoped that this study will contribute to the field by highlighting how such actors have become increasingly used as authoritative sources by media.
This thesis has been inspired by the work of Anstead and Chadwick who have taken the theory of primary definition developed by Stuart Hall by investigating whether this concept still has relevance in the contemporary age of social media updating its contemporary use through the development of authority signalling. Taking this vital work further, this study investigates whether authority signalling, and primary definition is still a relevant theory by analysing broadcast news coverage across three general elections. Chadwick extends authority signalling in another paper by seeking to place it within the context of authority theory, but this thesis will instead seek to place primary definition theory within a wider scope investigating if there is evidence whether experts such as think tank representatives and the media operate in a marketplace of ideas or a Habermasian public sphere of critical-rational debate.
Research Aim and Questions
Expertise, and those who are deemed to be experts, is a vital cog to the machinery of news production. Who journalists turn to for their knowledge on issues presented to the public is important because, during election periods, such knowledge may be drawn on in making decisions on which party to vote for. Therefore, the goal of this research is to ascertain whether UK television news journalists or presenters call on the authority of think tanks and, if so, if there is any challenge to that authority. This will be done by quantifying how often think tanks are used as either sources or ‘experts’, with the data providing a closer examination of what topics think tanks are invited to discuss or their knowledge utilised by journalists in presenting political information to the public. The results may reveal the extent to which the concept of primary definition theory is still relevant within broadcast television through investigating journalists’ signalling of the authority of think tanks and the knowledge they produce. Further, this research will also determine whether think tank representatives are introduced as sources or experts with ideological caveats, like left-wing, right-wing, or independent.
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To analyse this phenomenon, three research questions have been developed for quantitative and theoretical analysis. For the quantitative method, the research questions are:
- RQ1: How often are think tanks used as either sources or ‘experts’ and what level of authority signalling is utilised by journalists, presenters or guests?
- RQ2: Are think tanks introduced with ideological caveats (such as left-wing, Conservative, etc.), introduced as ‘independent’ or given no introduction?
To supplement the quantitative aspect of the research and explore the how of the research aims, the following research question is proposed for qualitative analysis:
- RQ3: What themes can be detected across the sample in which think tanks appear and how are these reported?
This third question will be used to determine if, and how, journalists are applying the knowledge of think tanks within broadcast news reports or interviews.
To conclude this introduction, some limitations and the contribution this study makes to political communication scholarship will be explored. The next chapter will provide a historical background of think tanks to provide the reader with some vital context before the following section which provides an overview of the theoretical literature of think tanks in political science and political communication studies. Next, the theoretical chapter will develop a theory in detail for primary definition and authority signalling as well as comparing the public sphere and marketplace of ideas, concluding with the methodological framework for the study. A discussion of the results from the content and thematic analysis as well as the results from the marketplace of ideas framework testing will follow before this thesis concludes by seeking to tie in the theory and results.
Limitations and contribution
Whilst this study will extend recent contributions to the field of political communication by analysing primary definition theory across three UK general elections, doing so only provides a snapshot of what is required to understand the phenomenon of think tanks and the media.
Also, this study will not be looking at public opinion formation, as the primary focus of analysis is on how opinion can be constructed through the media not on the effects of such
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construction. Such an analysis would necessitate a much wider and detailed analysis that space and time does not permit.
This research is important as a plurality of opinion within television news helps to determine the diversity of information people will be exposed to during election periods so by showing how think tanks may be overrepresented or their position as knowledge producers within the public sphere is presented in vague terms, this research will contribute to understanding contemporary changes to source access to broadcast media and thereby enrich public sphere scholarship by charting the representation of think tanks as expert and authoritative sources.
Page 8 of 97 Background
Definitions
Scholarship on think tanks has reached a consensus on the definition of think tanks: there is no consensus. This is more than likely because scholars arrive at studying the phenomenon of think tanks from a wide variety of disciplines. The term was initially coined in the United States after the Second World War to describe “a secure room or environment where defence scientists and military planners could meet to discuss strategy”, (Abelson 2009: 8) but has since grown to encompass a number of different organisations engaging in policy analysis and research. Surveying the latest research on think tanks, McGann offers the following definition of think tanks:
Drawing on Bordieuan theory of social fields, Medvetz places think tanks in a “fuzzy network of organisations… divided by the logics of academic, political, economic and media production… [and]… it is this series of oppositions that drives the interior dynamics of the space of think tanks”, (Medvetz 2012: 16). Stone argues that this is a myth. Think tanks are not ‘bridges’ between different domains and only supports the mystification think tanks seek to promote about themselves, (Stone 2013: 176). Stahl also queries Medvetz’s classification as an “anti-definitional stance”, (Stahl 2016: 221) but Medvetz is keen to stress that the vague definition of “fuzziness” can be overcome through a historical analysis of where these types of organisations are embedded, (Medvetz 2012: 16) thus creating a shifting definitional capacity based on a set of categories and relation to geographical space.
Focusing on Britain, Denham and Garnett argue that think tanks in Britain became defined through their association with the Central Policy Review Staff (CPRS) where the term “think tank” was first used to define a government unit that was designed to enable Conservative Prime Minister, Edward Heath’s government in 1970 to “coordinate its policies across
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departments, boundaries and to foster more long-term thinking”, leading the definition of think tank to mean an organisation involved in policy-planning and research (Denham &
Garnett 1998: 7). Ahmad defines think tanks as being an “institute, organisation, corporation or group that conducts research and engages in advocacy in areas such as social policy, political strategy science or technology issues, industrial or business policies, or military advice”, (Ahmad 2008: 534).
Despite the obvious differences, each of these definitions has a number of key similarities that a common sense meaning of think tanks would recognise: that they conduct policy research and analysis, they can be both independent and connected to partisan interests, they are interested in producing knowledge for long-term changes and that their knowledge reaches across different professional areas. A simplistic view would be that think tanks are organisations whose goal is to produce knowledge that seeks to change or influence the opinion of government or the public. For the purposes of this thesis, the definitional wheel will not be reinvented. It is beyond the scope of this study to redefine the terms of epistemological typologies but will instead utilise the simpler definition before explaining in greater detail in the methodology section how the ideological slant of think tanks are operationalised in this study.
A brief History of Think Tanks in Britain
Space and the necessity for brevity prevent a thorough examination of the history and the social and political emergence of think tanks in this analysis, however it is necessary to give a brief overview of the history of these organisations.
Think tanks, it has been argued, originated in the United States and have been classed as a uniquely American phenomena, (Denham & Garnett 1998: 3) despite their current growth across the globe. A product of the Progressive Era in the United States, according to McGann, a few existed before the Second World War when there was an “explosion both in the number and activities” of think tanks during the 1960 and 1970s, (McGann 2016: 22).
But why uniquely American? According to Denham and Garnett, the peculiarities of the American political system are a major factor in the scale of development of think tanks in the United States where the constitutional separation of powers, a supposed party political system rooted in electoral ambitions as opposed to ideological ambitions and a tradition of
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civil service more suited to political appointees than careered expert staff1 (Denham &
Garnett 1988: 4-5). The lack of policy experts readily to hand for newly sworn in politicians led to the flourishing of external policy expertise within an American political system still heavily dependent on expertise but distrusting of government which placed constraints on the size of the bureaucracy and its ability to deal with the growing complexity and number of problems government faced forcing policymakers to increasingly turn to outside expertise for assistance in managing domestic and foreign policy, (McGann 2016: 23).
The emergence of think tanks in Britain has, according to Denham and Garnett, arisen largely because of circumstances of crises, such as “perceived economic crisis, political instability and/or social tension” examples being: economic recession following the Wall Street Crash of 1929, (Denham & Garnett 1998: 21); a perceived crisis of hegemonic state-support amongst Britain’s two main parties who both hoovered up 96% of the vote in the 1950s, (1998: 64-7);
a crisis of identity in the Conservative Party, (1998: 89) or; the social upheaval following the strikes in the 1970s, (1998: 77). The beneficiaries of such crises were still largely marginalised and unknown to the British public, however, despite a growth of mostly right-wing institutions during the tenure of the Conservative government in the 1980s it was not until the Global Financial Crash of 2008 that think tanks have seen their stock rise because, as Hernando argues, there was a collective crisis of trust in the wisdom of experts with think tanks weathering the crisis much more efficiently than other sectors of the knowledge production sector, (Hernando 2019: 8).
What is the ‘marketplace of ideas’?
So far this thesis has discussed differences between the public sphere and a ‘marketplace of ideas’. But what is the ‘marketplace of ideas’? The marketplace of ideas is best understood as an abstraction or metaphor as opposed to a defined physical reality, (Weissberg 1996: 107).
The origins of the term can be traced back to the work of John Milton and John Stuart Mill in the 17th and 18th centuries where the term primarily meant the search for truth through the free exchange of ideas and the “importance of individual rights of self-expression and freedom of thought”, (Napoli 1999: 153). Legal scholars have traced the usage of the term in the American legal context to a published dissent from 1919 where Justice Holmes argued that “the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the
1 like the Civil Service in the United Kingdom.
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competition of the market” however such a formal view is not without context as Joo finds when arguing that Jefferson stated “error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it”, (Joo 2014: 385).
Quantitative studies of judicial comment have revealed that the term has been invoked often in cases following its first use by Holmes, with key decisions by judges in 1927 and 1945 linking freedom of expression within a marketplace of ideas as key to the freedom of political truth and effective democracy, (Napoli 1999: 153). Both concepts of freedom and democracy were linked to the economic idea of freedom of markets in judicial summaries in the “neo-classical”
interpretation according to the media economist, Bruce Owen:
This economic argument is relevant for the contemporary understanding of the marketplace of ideas whose proponents and supporters claim an unrestricted competition between any claim to truth is justified (be this astrology versus scientific inquiry, climate change denialism versus empirically-derived scientific consensus) with, as Weissberg argues, any idea given full and equal treatment in a marketplace where truth will contest bad ideas before discrediting and rejecting them “after having been openly considered”, (Weissberg 1996: 109). But what do we consider as grounds for sufficiently being “openly considered”? Is a four-minute journalistic studio interview of two guests with opposing ideas enough time for ideas to be rigorously tested? For proponents of the ’marketplace of ideas’ like Professor Eric Kaufmann of Birkbeck College, the “best way to beat bad ideas is with good ideas”, (Henry Jackson Society 2019) but such a strategy may be anathema to the structural impediments that all broadcasters must consider when crafting the news. Deliberation and consensus takes time and time is a commodity which is in short supply for broadcasters even despite the vast expansion in channel and programme availability. Fascism, genocide, eugenics are just ‘bad ideas’ to be ‘debated’ and overcome with ‘good ideas’ as a logic is inherently naïve when we consider that proponents of ‘bad ideas’ will use debating tactics like bad statistics, outright
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lies, spin, evasion and a host of other techniques to corrupt the ‘marketplace’ and prevent the necessary equality of opinion required for truth to overcome lies.
The formulation of the marketplace of ideas as a space ‘where opposing ideas clash’ is key to understanding the media as being the most important site for the marketplace of ideas to flourish because, at its heart, broadcast media logic is structured to provide a basis for idea versus idea, guest versus guest with the journalist or presenter acting as 'arbiter' between the two. Presented on the face of it as a place of debate, the ‘logic’ of broadcast news interviews is that of oppositionalism or, as Matt Taibbi argues in the case of the US, television news is a
“ritual of conflict”, (Taibbi 2019: no pagination). The marketplace of ideas, then, is a site for conflict not rational-critical debate.
Despite the apparent truth of the opening paragraph to this section, it should be possible to detect whether broadcast television news interviews exhibit aspects of the marketplace of ideas. For the purposes of this dissertation, a new framework of measurement has been developed incorporating aspects of Conversation Analysis as practised by scholars such as Mats Ekström at Göteborg Universitet to determine if a marketplace of ideas can be detected empirically in broadcast television news.
Page 13 of 97 Literature Review
As stated above, think tanks have been operating since the beginning of the twentieth century, many (increasingly since the 1970s) with the explicit intention of influencing government policy, (Rich & Weaver 2000). In recent years, a significant amount of scholarly analysis within political science has focused on the policy production and influence of think tanks predominantly in the United States and Canada, (Dahl Kelstrup 2017; Abelson 2009;
Stone 2013), the development of think tanks as research institutions, (Dahl Kelstrup 2016) or specific policy areas in the United Kingdom, (Pautz 2012a).
Writing about support for austerity in the UK press, Berry argues that there was a shift in the narrative of how the 2008 financial crisis was viewed from 2009. This shift focused on the problem not being the culpability of financial irregularities by the private sector but a fiscal crisis of overspending by the state. This narrative was promulgated by “City economists, right- wing think tanks and Conservative politicians”, (Berry 2016: 553). Berry’s work highlights how the press echoed the narratives pushed by the right but focused less on the relationship between think tanks and the media.
Further to this, Hartwig Pautz has argued that think tanks were influential in cementing the Conservative Party’s commitment to austerity after the global financial crisis in 2008, (Pautz 2018). While this thesis will focus on the British case, it is important to mention here that some articles have explored the austerity dimension with one by Plehwe, Neujeffski and Krämer arguing that a strong network of inter-national think tanks has been cooperating on maintaining the hegemony of the austerity discourse, (Plehwe et al 2018) and Ladi, Lazarou and Hauck looked at the changing discourse around austerity in Brazil finding that during financial crises think tanks were able to increase their visibility and either argue for or against austerity creating a polarised debate that arguably paved the way for austerity to be implemented in 2015, (Ladi et al 2018).
Whilst there has been some analysis exploring think tanks and their role within the public sphere, (Denham & Garnett 1998) or their role within political parties, (Schlesinger 2009) very little media and political communication research has investigated think tank representation in the media other than the occasional study, for example exploring think tanks in United States’ newspapers through comparing advocacy over professional norms, (Haas 2007) or the visibility of expertise in newspapers, (Rich and Weaver 2000). Important work on think tanks
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as lobbying organisations that have outsized networks of influence on government and political policymaking has been conducted by Dinan and Miller, (Dinan & Miller 2007) who also wrote an important chapter looking at how think tanks (and lobbying organisations) seek to dominate “information environment[s]” and thus play a significant role in the spread of anti-climate change discourse within media, (Dinan and Miller 2015). Think tanks have also been the subject of investigative reporting in a New York Times series of articles investigating funding sources and their influence on US politicians, (Lipton, Confessore and Williams 2016) but there have been very little in-depth studies researching think tanks and their representation within broadcast media. This study will fill this gap by investigating when the knowledge produced by think tanks is utilised by UK broadcast media.
As part of a conservative network of climate change denialism, there have been a number of studies and books written showing a link between denialism and conservative organisations to undermine the policies designed to mitigate the effects of climate change with, arguably, their most important victory being the “countermovement” between 1990 and 1997 of conservative organisations and think tanks to prevent the United States from ratifying the Kyoto Protocol, (McCright and Dunlap 2003). Outside of print and broadcast media, an important study of climate change denial books and the conservative think tank movement was published by Dunlap and Jacques which found that conservative think tanks have been an important resource in publishing anti-climate science ‘studies’ largely by authors with no scientific training and that these networks of think tanks have been crucial in spreading denialism to other countries, (Dunlap and Jacques 2013).
Writing in 2012, Painter and Ashe identified a growing trend in academia of studies into climate scepticism in US media, finding that available studies were limited to Anglophone countries but their limited study concluded that space for climate scepticism in newspapers was higher in the US and UK than other countries studied and that there was strong evidence linking the publishing of such views and the political leanings of the newspaper, (Painter and Ashe 2012: 6). In the UK context, Painter & Gavin analysed the proliferation of climate sceptical voices within newspapers and found that the opinions of climate denialists went uncontested in opinion pieces and editorials in right-leaning newspapers, (Painter and Gavin 2016).
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Other studies investigate how think tanks are involved in “processes of translating or distorting scientific findings” of climate change comparing the US and Germany, (Ruser 2018:
3); that the framing of climate change in the public sphere has been shaped by political actors but this framing has been done through the ideological leanings of each newspaper, echoing Painter and Gavin, (Carvalho and Burgess 2005: 1458).
An interesting study of think tanks and their role as news sources and agenda setters in Sweden by Allern and Pollack argues think tanks are quoted quite often within Swedish media but their results indicate that it is the more liberal-market orientated think tanks who appear more than their radical counterparts, (Allern and Pollack 2016: 72).
Only two articles discuss think tanks and primary definition. The first, by Anstead and Chadwick (2018), shows how political journalists circulate the opinion and information of one think tank, the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) on Twitter through signalling their authority on matters of economic analysis with no contestation by journalists, (Anstead and Chadwick 2018: 262-3). The second by Chadwick, McDowell-Naylor, Smith and Watts (2018) once again uses the IFS as the sole think tank to study a sample of broadcast news in the United Kingdom during the General Election of 2015 showing how authority signalling of the IFS was used by journalists in challenging the claims of politicians, but if the IFS was challenged by politicians, journalists respond by signalling the independent authority of the IFS as being beyond reproach, (Chadwick et al 2018: 17). Both studies are important contributions to research on think tanks but are limited because of their singular focus on only one single think tank.
Page 16 of 97 Theoretical Framework
The literature review highlighted areas investigated by scholars pertaining to think tanks and their relations with aspects of the media. Most articles have a narrow focus such as the role of think tanks in climate change denial and the rise of denialist literature produced by think tanks with the book by Denham and Garnett, British Think Tanks and the Climate of Opinion, the only book-length study that analyses the influence of think tanks in the United Kingdom.
However, there is relatively little that investigates think tanks and the public sphere and less that compares the public sphere and the marketplace of ideas.
First, this chapter will outline the ecological context in which the news sample for analysis is drawn from, highlighting the continued importance of broadcast news to the public. The second section will discuss two of the most important competing concepts to the governing of ideas in society, public sphere theory and the marketplace of ideas, which will provide an important context to public opinion construction: is broadcast television a space for rational- critical debate or a marketplace where ideas compete for dominance? Finally, the most important theoretical part of this analysis will explore primary definition theory which argues that media are mere secondary definers for authoritative figures who truly define narratives.
Context: The Media Landscape in Britain
Looking into trends in the UK media market, the British broadcasting regulator, Ofcom, argued that whilst there has been a shift from broadcast television to online video services, broadcasting is still vitally important to people’s viewing habits averaging around 69% of the daily five hours of video viewing per person in the United Kingdom. The report also reveals what audiences think about public service broadcasting with two key questions being important in providing a context for this thesis. The first asked respondents to rate how important it was to them that news programmes contribute to them being informed about the world with three sub-questions gauging the importance of trustworthiness, understanding and quality of local news. Figure 1 shows that 73% of respondents felt that trustworthiness was an important value for news provision whilst 69% think the informative nature of news is very important to them, (Ofcom 2019: 34).
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Figure 11 - Trustworthiness as important value for news provision
The second question asked respondents how they thought broadcasters were delivering on these three key values of trustworthiness, information, and quality. Audience perceptions in Figure 2 of actual delivery of trustworthiness fell from the 73% who felt it was important to 59% who felt that it was not being delivered. There was a reduction in those who felt that the news was actually informing them from their expected 69% to 62% and a reduction in perceptions of quality from 65% to 60%.
Figure 12 - Audience perceptions about quality of news being delivered
Ofcom’s 2019 news consumption report found that, whilst declining, television was the most- used platform for news used by adults with 75% with the internet being the next most popular platform for sourcing of news, (2019: 13).
Figure 13 - Sources of News for UK public 2013-2019 via Reuters Digital News Report 2019
The Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism Digital News Report confirms the importance
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of broadcast television to audiences in Figure 3 despite losing some viewers to other platforms in this new digital age with 71% of respondents still sourcing news from television whilst 75% also source their news from the internet and social media, (Newman, Fletcher, Kalogeropoulos and Nielsen 2019: 69). For the channels in the sample, the report shows BBC News, ITV News, Sky News being the three most popular and Channel 4 News appearing in ninth position out of the top fifteen most popular sources of news in television, radio and print, (Newman et al 2019: 69).
What does this mean for the present analysis? If audiences place a high level of importance in their news providers for trustworthiness and helping them to understand what is going on in the world with quality, then this should be reflected in their output. One way of ensuring that broadcasters satisfy their audience’s demands for quality information is through the type of sources they rely on for expert analysis and knowledge.
Public Sphere or Marketplace of Ideas? Part One: The Marketplace
“The best ideas win. That’s how it works, isn’t it?” Daniel Hannan UK MEP2
The history of think tanks after the Second World War is closely related to the development of the marketplace of ideas. In his book The Ideas Industry: How Pessimists, Partisans and Plutocrats are Transforming the Marketplace of Ideas, Drezner argues that there are three underlying forces transforming the marketplace of ideas: the erosion of trust in established authorities and expertise3, growth in political polarisation and the increase in economic inequality. All three, though, have had a combined effect on the marketplace in two ways, he continues. First, these trends have bizarrely increased the demands for intellectuals because the three forces increase the number of people willing to listen to outside-of-the- norm thinking and provides an avenue for intellectuals to forge a “niche in the marketplace of ideas.” But these forces also create an environment more hospitable to those who are willing to offer contradictory ideas to the status quo and who are willing, where public intellectuals and academics are not, to present their ideas as transformative solutions,
2 Quoted in a Guardian interview in 2019 https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/nov/29/rightwing- thinktank-conservative-boris-johnson-brexit-atlas-network.
3 In the EU Referendum in 2016, Michael Gove famously declared, “people in this country have had enough of experts” in an interview on Sky News (https://www.ft.com/content/3be49734-29cb-11e6-83e4-
abc22d5d108c).
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(Drezner 2017: 46-7). This lack of trust coupled with increased polarisation means that people refuse to reach a consensus on a common set of facts, (Drezner 2017: 52-7).
Focusing on the development of the marketplace of ideas within the Conservative movement in America, Stahl argues that two figures were central to its emergence. William Baroody of the American Enterprise Institute and Glenn Campbell of the Hoover Institute were integral, in 1967-68, to the push for conservative ideals and policies to be debated more openly through developing a “debating policy” that was “more amenable to their points of view”.
Part of this view was in the new dialectic that saw biases, like support for big business, as being positive attributes more important than the ideal of objectivity central to journalism and, although the term had been used before, “elite conservatives, especially those in think tanks” began to use the term as a way of undermining what they saw as the “liberal technocratic consensus”, (Stahl 2016: 47).
The election of Richard Nixon as President excited many conservative think tank activists like Baroody but they saw the Democrat control of the House as a major impediment to passing any conservative policy due to what they saw as the sinister liberal influence of the Brookings Institute and liberal academia. Stalh argues that this fear was not misplaced as Brookings helped to write a significant portion of the previous president’s “Great Society initiatives and provided the staffing” to Democrats in both Congress and the office of the President.
This idea of “balance” to Brookings was appealing to conservative donors keen to cloud their intentions so the emergence of the rhetoric “make our voices heard” in the “marketplace of ideas” didn’t just cloud political orientation but made them irrelevant, (Stahl 2016: 52). As Malik notes, such overt biases in a market can be viewed as skewing that market through the prevention of fair and equal access to the forum of public debate, (Malik 2019). This distortion of the market can be seen in how donors are able to request particular viewpoints to studies and have those studies “sped up”, (Stahl 2016: 58).
Taking a less critical view, Smith argues that the metaphor of the marketplace of ideas holds sway across the political spectrum with the space crowded with fierce competition for public attention and funding. Smith believes this metaphor to be appropriate in a political environment “shaped by advertising, market research, and the packaging – and repackaging – of political candidates” where ideas are simply commodities to be bought and sold, (Smith 1991: 201). Experts in this new marketable space are less noted for their expertise, Smith
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argues, more often simply being those who are able to access media which has led to the promotion of ideas really being “the promotion of the spokesmen for them” and resulting in some think tanks like the Heritage Foundation producing directories of conservative
“scholars” available as media “experts”. Smith argues that this “symbiosis” between “the entrepreneurship” of think tanks and a press that demands a consistent supply of the new and the controversial is a welcome development, but this upbeat view recognises that it is difficult to scientifically evaluate whether claims of expertise of scholarly value or “just skills in handling the mass media”, (Smith 1991: 201-2).
Key to the dissemination of ideas is not the ideas themselves but the people, argues Smith.
Conservative think tanks have been most adept at creating networks of influence for key activists and thinkers as opposed to developing new policy ideas, going so far as to create an alternative infrastructure to spread the ‘ideas’ and promote careers. This infrastructure has given certain voices high visibility as opposed to the slower route of academic recognition with conservative think tanks quick to encourage staff to write op-eds and distribute articles to newspapers, (Smith 1991: 206).
Public Sphere or Marketplace of Ideas? Part Two: The Public Sphere
In his seminal work, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, Jurgen Habermas reflected on the nature of the relationship between public life and hierarchical power structures and how it has changed over the centuries in the West. Habermas distinguishes between the realms of private and public life which he traces back to classical Greece and the markets where citizens would meet to discuss current affairs; the public sphere here was “an open field of debate” where entitled citizens could interact as equals, (Thompson 1993: 175).
Habermas argues that, whilst this classical belief in “publicness” had a profound effect on the west, there have been different forms of the public though history. In the middle ages, publicness was attached to sovereigns who ruled as the embodiment of the ‘public’ and representatives of a “higher power” famously depicted in Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes, with the life of the court feeding the view of publicity. This public sphere eroded following the development of mercantile capitalism in the 16th century as the gravity of political power changed and the conditions for a new public sphere emerged in Europe. This is where the meaning of public authority began to change too, shifting from courtly life and intrigue to the emerging state system after the treaty of Westphalia, defining legal structures and
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jurisdictions and shifting the “monopoly of violence” to the state. Civil society emerged during this time as “a domain of privatised economic relations” protected by the powerful new state machinery and law. The private became a mix of economic relations and the
“private realm” of the home and family, an important new institution. Between the private realm of the home and the public authority of the state emerged “a new sphere of ‘the public’” what Habermas refers to as the bourgeois public sphere. This new public was where private citizens could gather and criticise and debate the power of the state freely. This was done through what Thompson believes was “significant”: the public use of reason, (Thompson 1993: 175-6).
Two other factors shaped the development of the public sphere: rise of the periodical press and sites of “sociability in the towns and cities of early modern Europe” like coffee houses and salons which became important nodes of debate for educated elites and the nobility.
Habermas argues that discussion in the popular press influenced the development of the state because it was “constantly being called before the forum of the public” leading to Parliament becoming more open. However, Habermas points out that the bourgeois public sphere in this form did not last long, according to Habermas, with the state taking a more active role in managing citizens welfare and organised groups becoming more powerful and institutions like the coffee houses which fostered debate in the public sphere dying out. More importantly (certainly so for this analysis) Habermas argues that the commercialisation of the periodical press fundamentally altered their relationship to the public sphere from being one of a site of rational debate to “just another domain of cultural consumption” serving the interests of capital, (Thompson 1993: 178).
Despite the demise of Habermas’ bourgeois public sphere, important elements remain central to the perception of the contemporary public sphere. The most important of which is what Habermas calls the “critical principle of publicity” which is the notion that private individuals could have their personal opinions become public opinion through a “process of rational- critical debate” and is an important concept in democratic theory, (Thompson 1993: 178-9).
It is this principle that forms part of the ideological structures of contemporary “free” society;
the idea that any one of us could have our opinions become important through a process of rationally being heard in public. In reality, before the advent of the internet (and arguably
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since the increasing corporate control and presence of the internet through social media companies), access to spheres of influencing public opinion were highly restricted.
Part of the analysis of the marketplace of ideas reflected a change in the level of expertise of authority figures in media spaces commenting on issues of the day. The transformation from qualified expertise to performative expertise could be seen as a similar phenomenon to the scholarly analysis of the extension of mass media to the wider public through cable television and the internet as “dumbing down”, however McNair argues against scholarly work that views media institutions of the public sphere as dumbing down because of developments that have expanded access to the masses, (McNair 2002: 402) which McNair contends, “created a public sphere of ’practically infinite size’” with more information than anyone could absorb”, (McNair 2002: 404). McNair assessed this claim qualitatively to determine that the Habermasian ideal of a “healthy public sphere where citizens can exchange ideas, acquire knowledge and information, confront public problems, exercise public accountability, discuss policy options, challenge the powerful without fear of reprisals, and defend principles’” was being met with a decline in deference by journalists towards political elites and an increase in the quantity and quality of information available to the general public, (McNair 2002: 407-9).
This decline in deference to political elites has seen a rise in deference to 'experts' who profess to be 'independent' like the IFS.
Primary Definition and Authority Signalling
Analysing British television, Anstead and Chadwick developed the theory of authority signalling, an extension to Hall’s primary definition, which shows how political journalists propagate the views of think tanks as primary definers. This is important because there is a
“normative principle” that media should promote a diversity of opinion to the general public about the “assumptions underlying policy”, (Anstead and Chadwick 2017: 263).
Hall argues primary definition is achieved by faithfully reproducing (or without an appropriate level of criticism) the opinions of the powerful who the media “symbolically” legitimise as institutional structures because people in powerful positions are more likely to have their narratives heard due to their perceived access to more “accurate or specialised information”
by dint of their powerful, hierarchical position. The result of this ‘structured preference’
towards the powerful within the media places them as “spokesmen” of controversial topics or “primary definers”, (Hall et al 1982: 58).
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By seeking a balanced perspective, broadcast media organisations organise debates with two opposing opinions focused on the structural relationship between the media and primary definer who “commands the field” as an authoritative source meaning any opposition must argue against an already determined position. In this way, the primary definer “sets the limit”
for discussion that all dispute must be arranged around so any counter arguments can be labelled as “irrelevant”, (1982: 57-58) if such counter arguments are even given space to be aired for public consumption within media.
The media are thus secondary definers, and thus structurally subordinated to people in powerful positions and reproduce their opinions by “transforming” the “raw materials”
authority-figures provide into what Hall describes as “encoded language”, (Hall et al 1982: 60- 61). This allows them to create their own autonomous spin on the issue of defined social reality in a format their audience understands by translating and making more accessible the opinions of primary definers and giving them popular voice, (Hall et al 1982: 60-61).
The theory of authority signalling extends primary definition with three levels of authority:
overt authority which is when language is used that gives a clear impression that an ‘expert’
is an authoritative source, like “independent” or “respected”; assumed authority is where the opinions of the expert are presented as fact with no qualifying language provided, and;
contested authority is when language is used which suggests disagreement with the opinions of the authority, (Chadwick et al 2013: 13). This study seeks to clarify whether this theory of authority signalling also applies to the way in which journalists call upon private sector knowledge in presenting information to the public through television news segments or when interviewing political elites.
Critics of Primary Definition
Miller (1993) criticises Hall’s theory of primary definition by arguing that there are three limits to official sources gaining definitional advantage: divisions within organisations (for example, personal, professional or political); the effect of different levels of competition and co- operation between organisations; and the impact of news values. Commenting on Northern Ireland, Miller claims that “the ability to set the agenda is of little use if the audience which is being targeted is unconvinced”, however for Miller, Northern Ireland is a good example of overwhelming evidence contrary that the dominant idea of elites control hegemony. This does not necessarily disprove the theory of primary definition; if anything, it is an outlier.
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Consider monopolies in business. The existence of monopolies does not always mean that one business is the sole provider in a market to the exclusion of all others, just that competition is constricted in favour of one business. Primary definition works in a similar fashion: Hall is not saying that other voices are absent, just that figures of authority have a definitional advantage by privilege of their position, (1993: 386-401). Miller and others assume that because Hall argues for powerful figures being primary definers that must mean that he is arguing for primary definers to be the only definers.
When there is consensus or broad agreement between elites on an ideological point, austerity for example, then in this instance, official sources will be afforded primary definitional authority. Primary definition may also be time and information critical during crises. To satisfy breaking news demands and the constant need for new material in a market saturated with news providers and 24-hour news channels, media may invite sources on to discuss an issue before all facts have been determined. This gives the official source the opportunity to define the narrative. Once credible evidence that contradicts the official source is available, then media may question the credibility of the primary definer’s narrative authority.
Page 25 of 97 Methods and Materials
The journalism historian, Martin Conboy, argues that there is less literature devoted to scholarly studies of broadcast journalism because of the inherent difficulties of accessing archival footage and the time-consuming nature of studying those that do exist. Some studies have looked at certain institutions (like Lews and Cushion’s archival study of the BBC), but the nature of broadcasting means it is a much more difficult medium to explore, (Conboy 2013:
30). The studies that are available are achieved generally through real-time watching or recording as they happen for later analysis.
Using Box of Broadcasts4, a new academic resource for British television programming, this study will gather data from watching full episodes of main evening news broadcast media in the United Kingdom, specifically BBC News at Six, Channel 4 News, ITV Evening News, Sky News Tonight, from two one-week samples of weekday coverage of the General Elections in 2015, 2017 and 2019. Each week will cover Monday to Friday with the selected weeks being the first and last full week during each election and was chosen as there are different start dates to each election so by choosing the first and last weeks, the sample should be more robust. The sample was restricted to weekday coverage as that is when most news is consumed by the British public during the peak times between six and nine o’clock in the evening. One hundred and fourteen programs were analysed, totalling almost eighty-four hours of coverage from the four evening news programs selected for the study, (Table 1).
Quoting Canino and Huston, Harrison argues that selecting a one week sample sampling strategy of news material has been proven to be as generalisable to a full year of programming as a larger sample, (Harrison 2000: 4) but because the sample for this study is during three consecutive election periods, a further week has been chosen so that a less skewed sample towards coverage of manifesto launches5 affects the data gathered. It is expected that choosing two distinct time periods of study from each election period will
4 Box of Broadcasts records programs as they are broadcast and are then uploaded in the format in which they are transmitted so the researcher is viewing the same program witnessed by the audience. The researcher then is able to select and build playlists for viewing at any time.
5 Manifestos, as Bara explains, constitute “statements connoting intentions, emphases, promises, pledges, policies or goals to be activated should that party achieve office” which are designed to appeal to the voters during election periods, (Bara 2015: 585). As published documents they are much easier for media to dissect and use in interviewing or questioning politicians on policy issues. They are also, arguably, the most important document produced during an election period and, as such, much media resources and time go into analysing them when they are released by the parties.
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produce a far more robust sample covering a wider range of issues during the campaign period as well as covering continuing conversations around key moments of the campaigns.
A recent study (Lewis and Cushion 2017) of BBC content has helpfully provided an ideological taxonomy of think tanks which will be used in the content analysis central to this study to weight which think tanks appear in the sample.
Quantitative content analysis and thematic analysis will be employed for this study, expanding on previous research which has excluded private sector news broadcasters by incorporating Sky News, Channel 4 News, and ITV News. For each sample, programs will be viewed and coded according to a predetermined coding schedule to build data for a thematic analysis.
These quantitative and qualitative questions outlined above will be operationalised using the theory of authority signalling developed by Anstead and Chadwick which shows how political journalists propagate the views of think tanks as primary definers. Content analysis, as Hansen and Machin argue, is “well-suited” to analysing large quantities of communications data whilst also being able to track “long-term changes and trends” as well as being “well- suited” to integration into research that involves other methods like qualitative methodologies, (Hansen and Machin 2019: 114). The method of content analysis is processual and can be broken down into clear consecutive stages that allow for the systematic collection of data, however, a major criticism is that the method cannot tell researchers what categories should be analysed, (Hansen and Machin 2019: 114) as this is left to the researcher to define according to the material selected. A pilot study was conducted involving viewing
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two days of news programmes to develop and refine the coding criteria, dropping categories which were too similar, creating a more robust coding criteria.
For the thematic analysis, this study will be using the framework developed by The Glasgow Media Group, (Philo & Berry 2011) which is an approach based on the idea that in any contentious subject there should be competing ways of describing events and that these are linked to interests who will attempt to carve a narrative to justify their view of the world, (Philo & Berry 2011). This approach has been utilised the Glasgow Media Group to analyse media and their role in the proliferation of narratives around ideological struggles such as the Palestinian struggle in Gaza or the media’s role in the dehumanisation of migrants as well as the ideological battle in the seventies and eighties in the United Kingdom about the failures of the British economy and the targeting of industrial disputes by the British Government.
This method analyses media content for the latent themes by teasing out the dominant narratives within news headlines and stories but also looks to what is ‘missing’ to provide context to stories. This method is useful because the construction of news stories is influenced also by the levels of authority and deference accorded to speakers within reports, (Philo & Berry 2011). Missing information is a vital component of this method because it provides a clue to the ideological construction of news content. If information is missing from a single news report this can be put down to either a mistake or a structural issue of production limits of broadcast television. However, consistently missing or ignoring content which could provide viewers with an alternative viewpoint potentially speaks to the construction of a particular framing of an issue.
Strategies for thematic analysis vary wildly according to McAllum, Fox, Simpson and Unson, (McAllum et al 2019: 362), so to make the Glasgow Media Group method used in this thesis more robust, the coding strategy developed by Braun and Clarke was used (see Table 1.1) which involves creating a coding frame and checking that coding according to ten steps, (quoted in Cliffe 2019: 583-4). Analysis was completed using quantitative analysis software, NVivo and MaxQDA for the purposes of methodical speed and ease of editing according to the Braun and Clarke framework.
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Table 1.1 - Coding Strategy for thematic analysis by Braun and Clarke (quoted in Cliffe 2006: 584)
The Marketplace of Ideas: An Empirical Framework
The aim of this section is to provide a theoretical framework for empirically measuring the existence of a marketplace of ideas. This model is an amalgamation of elements of Conversation Analysis as developed and used by Mats Ekström and a set of categories specially designed for this thesis by the author. To detect the marketplace of ideas, three categories were created: expertise signalling, ‘moving on to the next question’ and the call to authority.
The marketplace of ideas in this formulation is where either ‘idea versus idea’ or unchallenged ideas or opinions are being presented whilst in a rational-critical public sphere those ideas would be tested by rigorous standards of journalist interrogation evidenced through the Conversation Analysis. Often when a marketplace of ideas is invoked, it generally means that views will be published with the possibility of opposing replies published at a later date. But this falls into the trap of merely presenting idea versus idea with no rational-critical response.
Whose idea ‘won’ or was ‘right’? Who gets to decide?
The marketplace of ideas also has another variation in its meaning whereby any idea should be given a platform with the validity of an idea or opinion in and of itself taking precedence over and above any calls to public debate and testing against rationality. The idea or opinion stands by itself as being worthy of being heard and thus another sector of the marketplace of ideas opens whereby it is not just idea versus idea to compete for hegemony in the minds of the public but simply the privilege of said idea to have the right for public hearing. The public are then called upon to be the ‘judge’ of whether said idea is valid or not. Here, there is no
‘testing’ of the idea within the marketplace as in the legal and economic formulation explained earlier. The viewer becomes both judge and consumer.
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Expertise signalling follows on from the idea of assumed authority of Anstead and Chadwick where an expert’s credentials and authority would be signalled by listing their academic, company and years of experience but in a marketplace of ideas no signalling is necessary because the ideas or opinions themselves do the work of authority. So, in the sample evidence of the marketplace of ideas would be a lack of introductions or signalling of expertise or when introduced, these will have only company affiliations and no details of experience or qualifications. ‘Moving on to the next question’ is where no interrogation of an answer is pursued. The question in this format does not have to be profound but must show that the interviewer has listened to the question but wants more information based on a perceived illogic on the part of the interviewee. This will also be evident in the call to authority where evidence should be present of a journalist or presenter calling to any experts authority (not just a think tank). In this scenario, there will be no signalling of ‘learning’ from past debates by journalists whose only contesting of interview ideas will be a signalling of another experts’
authority or through the presentation of opposing filmed clips of experts without commentary, follow-up questions or fact-checking of claims within the segment. Whilst this can be interpreted as being a ‘trustworthy’ source of expertise, when there is no signalling (as in the expertise signalling criteria) the assumption that the interviewee must be an expert by dint of the fact that they are being interviewed and their opinion is being unchallenged.
To counterpose the above framework, Conversational Analysis will be used to detect where the marketplace of ideas fails but journalism succeeds in being rigorous in holding expert sources to account. Some elements of the method used by Mats Ekström have been taken to measure standards of debate within studio interviews: accountability, clarifying of promises and principle assessment questions as well as interruptions and repeat questions.
Accountability questions are questions where the interviewee is asked to justify their responsibilities or decisions regarding policies, actions, or non-actions. Clarifying of promises are questions where the interviewee is asked “what they will do” and principle assessment questions is where the interviewee is asked for their interpretation of a situation in which they are involved, (Ekström 2015: 984).
If principle assessment questions are evident in an interview without at least one of the other two question forms, then the interview is not satisfying standards for debate and is an example of the marketplace of ideas because the interviewer is reliant upon the opinion of
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the interviewee without interrogating that opinion. These three forms of questioning should not be restricted to politicians either. Any expert opinion should be held to scrutiny without the need for an interviewer (journalist or presenter) to become an expert in the subject under discussion. It should be expected that an interviewer has enough expertise in their own field to be able to scrutinise any expert using broadly the same tool of interrogative questioning that they employ on politicians. After all, it could be argued that journalists and presenters are not politicians and so have not the required expertise or experience with which to adequately interrogate interviewees.
In another article, Ekström identifies an important aspect of the power relationship in interviews as being the ‘interruption’. Ekström argues that interruptions “influence the outcome in terms of space in conversation” that also violate a speaker’s right to speak demonstrating “one person’s power to take the floor and force the other to stop what they are doing”, (Ekström 2007: 969). For the purposes of this study, interruptions serve another purpose. They are a ‘signifier’ that ‘debate’ is happening and that a ‘marketplace of ideas’
where opposing ideas are refereed according to a turn-based principle, have been replaced in favour of ‘accountability’.
Ekström’s work on applying conversation analysis to political interviews is important but it focuses primarily on politicians. It should be possible to observe the same phenomena when journalists or presenters interview other primary definers or experts of knowledge. As such, it is expected that the same or a similar level of accountability politicians face when being interviewed on policy matters should be evident in interviews with representatives of think tanks or other experts within the selected sample.
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From the quantitative content analysis of the sampled news programmes from four distinct primetime evening news shows, fifty-three think tanks were counted (shown in Table 2) as either being interviewed or mentioned by journalist, presenters, or a variety of guests. In line with previous research, this study finds that the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) was by far the most quoted or interviewed think tank across broadcast news fifteen times out of fifty-three total mentions. The IFS was the dominant think tank in news coverage with 28% of all references to think tanks over the three sampled general election periods. The next most popular think tank was The King’s Fund with four references followed by seven different think tanks all with two mentions apiece across the entire sample. Nine think tanks accounted for thirty-three references, or 62%, of the fifty-three think tanks mentioned or interviewed across the sample.
The table shows, also, that broadcast outlets favoured centrist think tanks over their left and right counterparts, although as Table 3 shows, think tanks on the right were mentioned almost twice as much as those on the left.
Breaking the data down further, this study has found that BBC News at Six, Channel 4 News and Sky News Tonight all had appearances from favoured think tanks on multiple occasions with all three programmes favouring the IFS above all others, (see Figure 4). This confirms studies by both Cushion and Anstead which found the IFS to be the dominant quoted expert in broadcast news segments. Of the remaining think tanks with multiple appearances, The King’s Fund is a non-partisan think tank with two references whilst the left-wing think tanks (marked in red), Resolution Foundation and Institute for Public Policy (IPPR) and the right- leaning (marked in yellow), Taxpayer’s Alliance and Institute of Directors all have two mentions. What this graph also shows is that certain channels favour ideologically aligned think tanks with the private sector Sky News Tonight favouring those from the right, Channel 4 News favouring those from the left and the publicly-funded BBC favouring think tanks from the centre.
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Figure 14 - Multiple mentions or interviews of think tanks by program
Figure 5 shows that ownership types seem to have a bearing on the use of think tanks with the private and advertising-funded broadcasters, Sky, ITV, and Channel 4 accounted for the majority of the sample with forty-seven of fifty-three. This suggests that the private sector is more heavily reliant on think tanks for expert opinion than BBC News at Six which, during the election period only uses the IFS as an expert think tank. However, to confirm this finding a larger study with a much larger sample would need to be conducted. For the purposes of this study though, it is interesting that the main evening news channels have such a marked skew in the sourcing of expertise. Some reports have suggested a Foxification of Sky News [Cushion and Lewis 2009] but the UK broadcasting climate is not the same as the US due to more stringent regulations notably during election periods. This is not to say that workarounds can be achieved so that a less balanced opinion can be reflected within output over time. This is reflected in the data above with Sky News appearing to lean towards more RW sources than other channels. This is where the data set shows limitations as there are not enough mentions with which to provide concrete analyses so it would be advisable for further research to gather a much larger data set to test this hypothesis.
Of the thirty-three programs which featured think tanks, other voices were utilised by journalists and presenters for their expert opinion shown in Table 4. Vox Pops were the most popular source of voice across the sample with 17 interviews followed by Conservative and International Politicians with 13 and 10 interviews, respectively. Despite being the official
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
IFS IFS IPPR Resolution Foundation IFS Institute of Directors Taxpayers Alliance The King's Fund
BBC News at SixChannel 4 NewsSky News Tonight
