Alliance: a party ignored by the media
by Siobhan LAIRD
Alliance News
June–August 1995

The newspapers do not print our statements… interviewers will not give us air time… the media are not interested in us, because from their standpoint an ideology built upon the tenets of negotiation and compromise is not newsworthy.

Our general reaction to the mass media’s tendency to treat Alliance Party utterances as a non-event has been to moan loudly. While this may do some good in terms of catharsis it does nothing to redress the absence of media focus on the party. In the past, we have tackled this problem in two ways. One has been to blame the media and conclude that non-coverage is an occupational hazard for those who articulate a policy position based on the competing needs of both traditions. Such a position lacks the simplistic black-and-white soundbite quality of statements put out by Nationalist and Unionist representatives. Indeed, Nationalism and Unionism have made media careers for themselves based upon nothing more substantial than a critique of each other.

Coverage

The second reaction to the media has involved a technical approach to gaining coverage for statements. In this connection there have been a number of workshops for elected representatives and spokespersons to improve the timing and structure of statements and so increase the likelihood of coverage.

While this remains an essential means of tackling the media problem, in my opinion we are over-focused on the purely technical issue of producing well-manicured statements and faxing them at the right moment. It is time we took a long, hard analytical look at the means by which other parties and organisations gain media penetration.

Much comment has been made on the high media attention given to Sinn Fein. This is attributed to their integral relationship with the IRA and the media; infatuation with the gun. While this reasoning is accurate it misses a vital element in Sinn Fein’s success in utilising the media to maximum effect. Sinn Fein take one issue at a time and every spokesperson then pushes that single item at every media opportunity.

RUC

Sinn Fein did this to great effect with their “disband the RUC” soundbite, with just about every representative giving us a blow-by-blow analysis of why the RUC was unacceptable to Catholics. Now, they are using exactly the same technique to insist on entry to all-party talks without any decommissioning. How many times have we been told by Sinn Fein representatives that an insistence on decommissioning will terminate the peace process? It is monotonous to hear, but there is no doubt that everyone in Northern Ireland now knows exactly where Sinn Fein stands on the issue.

One of the errors we make in our dealings with the media is that we try to say too much as a party all at once. Consequently, our message becomes diffused. We squander the limited media coverage we have by trying to convey too many themes at the same time; our message becomes fragmented and indistinct.

Let us take another example — Greenpeace. The success of this organisation in raising issues at both a national and international level cannot simply be passed off as merely being attributable to a general public sympathy towards environmental issues. One of the reasons for the organisation’s high media profile has been the innovative way in which it highlighted issues.

Dynamic

Dumping soil from Cumbria at Downing Street to protest at the continued emissions from Sizewell, or landing two Greenpeace members on the Brent Spar oil platform are both headline-grabbing actions. Now I am not suggesting that we airlift two Alliance councillors to the top of Belfast City Hall, but I am pointing out that we need to raise issues in a more dynamic form than the conventional statement.

It is time we considered a more coordinated and innovate approach towards our relationship with the media. We have immense difficulty gaining media attention. Let us accept that fact without being defeated by it. We cannot change what we have to say to suit the media, but we can change the way we package what we have to say to suit the media.

Given the crucial role of the media in promulgating our message, perhaps the time has come for us to create a new committee within the party which addresses itself solely to packaging issues in ways which will gain media coverage. A small publicity committee could act to create innovative ways of highlighting important issues and of mobilising resources to this end. The impediments to media coverage can only be tackled effectively through a collective and imaginative approach by the party. Media coverage is a problem; it is time we solved it.

Cross-published at Divided Society.