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Journalism and the Public Mind
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 March 2014
Extract
IT WAS MACHIAVELLI, THE FIRST MODERN POLITICAL THINKER, who distinguished between two kinds of problem a prince might have to face. The first sort was easy to cure but difficult to recognise, the second easy to recognise but very hard to cure. The key to successful management of a state was thus the prescience to recognise problems early on, and the will to take the necessary action.
Five centuries later, the basic situation remains the same, but the terms have changed. First, whereas a prince merely took advice from a few counsellors, the contemporary ruler is at the centre of a complex network of committees which act, so to speak, as his channel of cognition. Such channels can get blocked. The effectiveness of governments thus depends on how successful experts are in translating their reports on new developments into terms which can serve the cause of wise political action.
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- Copyright © Government and Opposition Ltd 1989
References
1 The Prince, Ch. III.
2 Julius Caesar, I, 2.
3 See, for example, van Wolferen, Karel, The Enigma of Japanese Power, Macmillan, 1989.Google Scholar
4 Allan Bloom in The Closing of the American Mind, Penguin, 1988, explains the spread of relativism in American life by the spread of philosophical ideas. No less important is the impact of journalistic practices, and these are not themselves the outcome of philosophical ideas.
5 For example, the editors of newspapers who used to give plenty of wise advice on the conduct of labour relations found themselves quite incapable of dealing with the print unions of Fleet Street in its last days.
6 Negrine, Ralph, Politics and the Mass Media in Britain, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1989, p. 5.Google Scholar
7 Negrine, op cit., p. 4. That last phrase in quotation marks comes from Gitlin, T., The Whole World is Watching, University of California Press, 1980, p. 2.Google Scholar
8 Negrine, op cit., p. 120, quoting from evidence given to the Annan Report.
9 See as an example of this genre Bad News and More Bad News, both produced by the Glasgow Media Group.