It’s not easy (not) being green: Agenda dissonance of Green Party press relations and newspaper coverage

Abstract

The Green Party of England and Wales is trying to move from being perceived as a party with a specific environmental focus to a broad-spectrum political force with policy and opinion across the full range of political issues. How does the UK press respond to this change of agenda by the party? An analysis of UK newspaper articles and Green Party press releases reveals a dissonance between what is discussed by the party and what is printed about the party. Further investigation reveals that, in relation to specific political events, Green Party opinion, even though appearing to widen the political debate on some key issues, was largely ignored by UK newspapers. These findings have implications for any minority or ‘core-issue’ party looking to widen its political agenda and electoral appeal.

Keywords

Content analysis core-issue party newspaper coverage party politics press releases

Introduction

Following the 2015 UK General Election, the Green Party of England and Wales (hereafter, ‘Green Party’) had 1 Member of Parliament (MP), 3 Members of the European Parliament (MEP), 2 London Assembly members and 160 seats on Principal Authorities. They have come from being a party with a specific environmental emphasis to a party concerned with, and vocal about, the full range of political issues.¹ Their 86-page 2015 general election manifesto (Green Party, 2015) devoted only 11 pages specifically to environmental politics. Yet, the party is still popularly perceived as a single-issue party. The Green Party rhetoric is unequivocal in stating that the party is aiming for further electoral success. However, to do this, it is evident that they must appeal to a wider constituency outside their environmental core. The party appears to be looking to position itself as a left-aligned alternative in UK politics. Although their vote share in 2015 saw a large increase over previous elections (1.1 million votes − 3.8% vote share, up from 1% in 2010), they did not achieve a significant electoral breakthrough, remaining with just one MP.

The UK Greens went through similar ideological divides as those outlined by Mayer and Ely (1998) and Doherty (1992) in their discussion of continental European green parties. These authors argue that the UK Green Party examined the split in the German Green Party between the ‘fundi’ and ‘realo’² arms, looked internally in a similar fashion and came out on the ‘realo’ side – deciding that if electoral success was to be achieved, a wider policy remit needed to be pursued. Spoon (2009) outlines the party’s occupation of distinct ‘red’ space in the political sphere – he argues that his analysis of the UK Green Party literature conforms to expectations from, among others, Bomberg (1998) and Shull (1999). Shull (1999) refers to the German Green’s (Die Grunin) ‘strategy of “red/green” or ecosocialist’ (p. 2) – a model closely resembling that of the Green Party of England and Wales.

To what extent, if at all, is this change recognised and acted on by the UK press? Is a minor party able to set their own agenda? What would be the implications of these findings for other minor or core-issue parties? This article investigates whether the party is allowed a voice in the UK press and also examines whether the party is a sufficiently elite actor to influence the agenda of their coverage with respect to specific policy areas, and in relation to explicit political events. To answer these questions, a content analysis is undertaken of Green Party press releases and UK newspaper coverage of the party during the years 2008–2014, and also specific political events which occurred during that period.

‘The press, whilst free to be partisan …’

It is maybe axiomatic to state that media plays an important role in the lives of most UK citizens. It is also probably axiomatic to state here that the level of influence the media has over those citizens is a highly contested area. Although it is widely argued that exposure to political media can influence our thoughts and behaviours (Gavin and Sanders, 2003; Norris and Sanders, 2003), the extent, and role of moderators and mediators is much contended (Brynin and Newton, 2003; Curtice, 1999; McKie, 1995; see McLeod et al., 2002 for a fuller discussion of political communication effects). Despite this debate, greater influence over the media is sought by all those seeking to advance a particular message. As party membership has seen a sharp decline (Mair and Biezen, 2001; Marshall, 2009), and ideological party alignment has been seen to decrease in the United Kingdom (Lynch and Garner, 2005; Negrine, 2008), the potential for a concomitant increase in the impact of the media is argued. As newspapers in the United Kingdom, unlike the broadcast media, have no obligation of impartiality (‘the Press, whilst free to be partisan …’ (Press Complaints Commission (PCC), 2011) – they can, and do, overtly support political parties; this potential impact has implications for the efficacy of democracy, an implication investigated by this empirical research.

It is argued by Deacon and Wring (2011) that the impact of the newspaper press is more acute than other media in the United Kingdom due to the nature of the industry. This is in part due to the both centralised and nationally oriented news media, which is increasingly dominant as local and regional media suffers. A powerful, persuasive and partisan press has obvious implications for a democratic society. If this power and partisanship is solely aligned with the traditional main political parties to such a degree that an alternative voice is unable to find a platform in our newspapers, then that has further implications. Bennett (1996) argues that the norm of balance is one of the central tenets of the journalism estate. Gamson and Modigliani (1989) note that the balance norm is typically reduced to two competing positions – the official (governing body) and most salient oppose (usually the main opposition party). Only elite sponsored frames will be allowed in by the gatekeepers (Gamson and Modigliani, 1989; Gitlin, 1980). Gans (1979) and Tuchman (1978) argue that the frame-building process works through an interaction between journalists and elites – are the Green Party considered sufficiently elite to play a role in their own frame constructions?

Wheeler (1997) notes how the entire history of newspaper reporting of UK politics is a history of partisanship. The recent discussions of whether it was indeed the ‘Sun wot won it’ (McKie, 1995) and won it again (Curtice, 1999), to the ‘Tony press’ years, up to the 2010 General Election and the resurgence of the ‘Tory press’³ (Wring and Deacon, 2010) are merely the latest examples in a long history. Franklin (2003) describes the relationship between the media and politics as ‘characterised by collaboration more than conflict’ (p. 46). The most common collaboration now comes from political uses of West’s (1963) ‘Fifth Estate’, Public Relations.

Political parties, agenda setting and public relations

The often quoted summary of the theory of agenda setting (also see Kosicki, 1993; McCombs and Shaw, 1972) is that the media, ‘can’t tell you what to think, but it can tell you what to think about’. Subsequent research is a continuing academic conversation, but despite this, it is probably fair to say that political parties appear to dispute even the initial caveat. Parties expend vast resources on trying to tell voters what to think. Empirical study demonstrates how parties work and often succeed to position issues they ‘own’ high on the media agenda in an attempt to make those the issues of salience to voters (Petrocik, 1996; Sides, 2006; Walgrave and De Swert, 2007 − though see Strömbäck and Nord, 2006 for a contrary view). Bennett (1990) argues that journalists ‘index’ the range of opinion, privileging, in particular, governmental views and also other elite opinion (also see Lewis et al., 2008 for a UK context).

Brandenburg (2002, 2005) found strong correlation between the agenda set by main political parties in General Election campaigns and media agenda. Hopmann et al. (2010), when examining Danish politics, found similar. They concluded that more ‘relevant’ parties have more success in getting press releases translated to media stories, leading to a ‘self-sustaining circle’ (p. 14).

While it has been argued that press releases from major parties can influence the media agenda, there is a scarcity of literature examining minor party influence. Rudd and Connew (2007), in their examination of New Zealand politics echoed Hopmann et al. (2010), concluding that ‘it is not the major-minor party status that determines newsworthiness, but the degree of potential influence the party exercises’ (Rudd and Connew, 2007: 52–53). Semetko (1989) documented the difficulties the new Social Democratic Party (SDP)–Liberal Alliance (which later became the Liberal Democrats) faced in gaining sufficiently prominent air-time before the 1983 election.

The exponential rise of the government information systems under New Labour examined by McNair (2004) was merely further affirmation of prior increase. White (2002) perhaps sums up this period nicely with his barb that ‘no spin is the new spin’. These public relations machines are substantially financially supported, well-staffed and are able to produce these ‘information subsidies’ (Gandy, 1982) at an impressive rate (Brandenburg, 2005).

Despite the Liberal Democrats ascending to coalition government in 2010 for one parliament, the United Kingdom is essentially a two-party system. Although some argue that it is perhaps more correctly referred to as a two-and-a-half party system⁴ (Webb, 2005: 758), it has not historically been a multiparty system. The two (½) main parties have dominated the political landscape in recent history. It is here examined whether, given this domination, an alternate voice, specifically the Green Party with its limited political influence, is deemed newsworthy by UK newspapers. The central questions asked here are as follows: To what extent do the media report on the party? Do the media reporting of the party reflect and respond to the agenda of the party? and Is the party a privileged elite actor, able to establish its own image-frame, or does the media supply a pre-constructed frame with which it views the party?

Methods

The research was split into three phases – first, hand and machine analysis of Green Party press releases and newspaper coverage of the party over the period 2008–2014. This period was chosen as it covered an interesting period in the evolution of the party. During this period, the party had their first MP elected (Caroline Lucas, in 2010), plus made significant gains at local government level. Lucas was a very prominent leader who garnered much news coverage. Much was written on the ‘Green Surge’ in late 2014, which saw substantial increases in membership of the party, and polling data in early 2015 even put the party on parity with the Liberal Democrats. The culmination of this was the party receiving over 1 million votes in the 2015 General Election.

The 7-year analysis was supplemented by an examination of coverage of the party during that period in connection with eight significant political events; specifically the 2009 Copenhagen Climate Change Conference, the 2010 Comprehensive Spending Review, the Deepwater Horizon oil spill of 2010, the 2010 Strategic Defence Review, the UK riots of 2011, National Health Service (NHS) reforms in 2013, the High Speed Rail 2 report 2013 and the escalation of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict in Gaza in 2014.

For the first phase, a quantitative methodology using two forms of content analysis was designed. A relatively in-depth discursive hand-coded content analysis was undertaken of the newspaper articles and press release samples. This was complimented by an automated content analysis of the same units of analysis using the software programme WordStat. This research aims to evaluate the nature of party coverage, and how much the party appears to be able to influence that coverage. Therefore, both articles and press releases were coded for topics/policies covered and party actors mentioned and/or quoted. Articles were also coded for depth of coverage, tone of coverage and whether the article was a news or opinion piece (letters and comments).

Topics covered had 15 coding categories, 12 distinct policy areas (see Table 3) plus an ‘other’ category and also party matters (e.g. polling numbers) and personality pieces. Each release and article was coded with the first (maximum) three categories identified in the text.⁵

The second half of each year was used to collate the data sample. Election periods were deliberately avoided to limit simple ‘horse-race’ coverage (Franklin and Richardson, 2002; Gaber, 2007). Press releases were gathered from the Green Party website – a sample of 924 press releases were analysed. Press releases conform to the ‘inverted pyramid’ structure of newspaper stories. Both Bartram (1995) and Bland et al. (2000) are very prescriptive in their instruction that all the salient points from a press release should be found in the first paragraph (if not sentence). Therefore, the unit of analysis was the headline and opening paragraph of each press release – ‘press release units’.

Newspaper coverage was analysed in the main UK national daily and Sunday newspapers. Newspaper stories were collated using the Nexis database. Whether the party is treated differently by different sections of the media is of direct interest to this research, therefore for comparison, the newspapers were categorised into ‘right-leaning’ and ‘left-leaning’ groupings (see Table 1). These groupings were operationalised using newspaper party endorsements from the 2005 to 2015 elections. Wring and Deacon (2010) listed the editorial declarations of party support of all UK national newspapers for the 2005 and 2010 General Elections. Editorial declarations in 2015 were obtained from Cushion et al. (2016). The right-leaning category contains those newspapers that always or mainly (two of the three elections) supported the Conservative party, and the left-leaning contains those that always or mainly supported Labour or the Liberal Democrats.

Table 1.

Newspapers with circulation numbers and political leaning.

Newspaper	Leaning	Circulation (000)	Newspaper	Leaning	Circulation (000)
Sun	Right	2214	News of the World Sun on Sunday	Right Right	2790 2010
Daily Mail	Right	1781	Mail on Sunday	Right	1587
Daily Express	Right	500	Sunday Express	Right	431
Daily Telegraph	Right	545	Sunday Telegraph	Right	429
Times	Right	384	Sunday Times	Right	818
Daily Mirror	Left	992	Sunday Mirror	Left	949
Guardian	Left	208	Observer	Left	225
Independent	Left	67	Independent on Sunday	Left	114

All figures from Audit Bureau of Circulation, 2014, except News of the World (NOTW) figure from 2011. NOTW ceased publication in 2011, following the phone hacking scandal. The Sun on Sunday replaced it as the sister paper of the Sun newspaper in 2012.

The full text of each story was examined for the search terms, ‘Green Party’, ‘Caroline Lucas’, ‘Natalie Bennett’ or ‘(the) Greens’, to be found anywhere in the text.⁶ This yielded a sample of 987 relevant articles. To restrict analysis of the newspaper articles to those sections of the article germane to the Green Party only, paragraphs containing the key term(s) were analysed. However, preceding and subsequent paragraphs were included if required for context. Opinion pieces from party officials were treated as one unit of analysis. Key term paragraph(s) were established as the units of analysis. As several articles had more than one unit, a total of 1045 ‘newspaper units’ of analysis formed the data set.

Each unit of analysis was categorised according to the depth of coverage of the party. An iterative six-point coding scheme to categorise the depth of each unit was established. Specific guidelines relating to position of the party in the article/unit, quantity of referencing the party and/or quoting the party were developed in the trial phase. For tone, a three-point scale was devised, and a discursive analysis of the text used, to categorise units into negative, neutral (either balanced or no discernible tone) or positive. Such tone analysis was similarly undertaken by Semetko et al. (1994) and De Vrees et al. (2006).

The manual coding analysis yielded interesting answers to the research questions. To increase confidence in these findings, the same units were also analysed using WordStat. This analysis provided confirmatory and stronger frequency outcomes and also a coefficient test using Jaccard’s coefficient. The WordStat use was confined to the analysis of policy area coverage – the area both of greatest interest for this research and also the most suitable for this automated analysis.

For the second phase of analysis, eight political events were chosen from the same period. The events were chosen to cover a broad range of policy areas, plus where preliminary analysis identified that the Green Party position was significantly different to the position of both the Conservative and Labour parties. The same newspapers were interrogated using Nexis, with search terms chosen to capture the vast majority of stories subsequent to each event. Green Party opinion on these events was established from press releases and statements issued by the party and, as necessary, their general policy position established from their 2010 manifesto (Green Party, 2010).

Findings

There was fairly limited coverage of the Green Party generally; just 987 newspaper articles referenced the party over the 7-year period. There were large differences in the extent of coverage of the Green Party between newspapers. The party was covered relatively extensively by the Guardian which accounted for 427 units of analysis; the Independent had the next most extensive coverage with 135. Conversely, 5 (right-leaning) newspapers referenced the party less than 20 times.

Depth and tone of coverage of the green party

Table 2 illustrates the difference in tone and depth coverage between the ideological newspaper dichotomies. Left-leaning newspapers cover the party in significantly more depth and more positively than their right-leaning counterparts. Naturally, this is not surprising given that the Green Party occupies space firmly on the left of the political spectrum. This also corresponds to findings from previous studies which have concluded that left-leaning newspapers are typically more accepting of the ‘Green agenda’ than right-leaning newspapers (Carvalho, 2007; Hulme, 2009; Lockwood, 2009 all conclude this with specific reference to the acceptance of Anthropogenic Climate Change).

Table 2.

Depth and tone of coverage.

	All newspapers(n = 1045)	Right-leaning newspapers (n = 365)	Left-leaning newspapers (n = 680)
Depth
Low (1)	19%	25%	15%
Mocking (2)	3%	7%	1%
Medium (3/4)	46%	45%	46%
Substantial (5/6)	33%	23%	33%
Tone
Negative	16%	31%	8%
Neutral	42%	49%	38%
Positive	42%	20%	54%

There were some positive findings for the party from the analysis. Longitudinal data of all newspapers show that the press did appear to become more critically engaged with the party over time – both the absolute number and proportion of high depth and positive tone coverage trending up (Figure 1).

Figure 1.

Tone and depth of newspaper coverage.

Also, coverage in the Guardian certainly provides positive news (often literally) for the party, particularly when one considers the opinion pieces. The paper covered the party in 111 letters and 90 comment pieces over the period. They were overwhelmingly positive; 68% of letters were positive, with only 12% negative. The Guardian letters pages were often used as a platform to allow the party to express their opinion and advocacy for Green Party policy.

This relatively positive reading of the coverage of the party by one newspaper must, however, be read within the context of general indifference. The one area of perhaps greatest concern for the party is the conclusion that party moves towards a discussion of wider policy areas is met with mixed responses by the UK press. What the party wants to talk about is not always what is reported about the party.

They are the ‘Green’ party

Each press release and newspaper unit was categorised into one to three distinct policy and party areas. Comparing the two sources does appear to reveal some dissonance between what the Green Party publishes, and what newspapers report on them. As shown in Table 3, the party are significantly over-reported on the environment – whereas environmental policy only accounts for 20% of the policies found in press releases; it accounts for 35% of policy areas covered in newspaper units. For the right-leaning press, this figure increases to 48%. The over-relation of the party to the environment is perhaps not a surprising finding, and it would be perhaps unduly critical of the UK press to not expect this given that the party is called the ‘Green’ Party. Most policy areas are broadly in the same proportion for both releases and articles; the big difference besides environment being social welfare issues.

Table 3.

Policy areas covered by newspaper units and press releases.

Policy area	Newspaper units (n = 1257)	Press releases (n = 1224)	Difference (news − press release)
Environment	35%	20%	+15
Health	4%	5%	−1
Economy	12%	12%	0
Education	3%	4%	+1
Work	5%	8%	−3
Social issues	8%	16%	−8
Immigration	1%	1%	0
Defence	6%	4%	+2
International issues	7%	11%	−4
Law and order	10%	8%	+2
Equality	5%	6%	−1
Transport	5%	5%	0

Analysis using WordStat on the same texts confirms the over-dominance of environment policy in newspaper articles in comparison to press releases. From these texts, the most common policy-related phrases (two to five words) for newspaper units and press releases were recorded. As shown in Table 4, environmental phrases are far more common in newspaper units (more so right-leaning ones) than press releases.

Table 4.

Most common policy-related phrases.

Newspaper units – most common policy phrases	Right-leaning newspaper units	Left-leaning newspaper units	Press releases
Climate Change	Climate Change	Climate Change	Climate Change
Shale Gas	Shale Gas	Shale Gas	Living Wage
Nuclear Power	Nuclear Power	Renewable Energy	Human Rights
Renewable Energy	Direct Action	Nuclear Power	Young People
Human Rights	Drilling Site	Minimum Wage	Metropolitan Police
Tuition Fees	Metropolitan Police	Green New Deal	Tuition Fees
Drilling Site	Public Order	Tuition Fees	Air Pollution
Metropolitan Police	Global Warming	Living Wage	Nuclear Power
Minimum Wage	Carbon Dioxide	Human Rights	Public Services
Green New Deal	Carbon Emissions	Metropolitan Police	Renewable Energy

Environment-related phrases are highlighted. ‘Direct action’ and ‘public order’ are included as all instances refer to the arrest of Caroline Lucas at an anti-fracking demonstration.

These findings were examined also using the connection between the key actors and indicator words. A proximal approach was employed (Corman et al., 2002) to measure co-occurrences of the search terms previously employed with policy indicator words in the same paragraph. The coefficient used is the Jaccard’s coefficient.

There are inconsistent results within the environmental frame – right-leaning papers have a higher coefficient than the left-leaning papers for some environmental terms (e.g. fracking – indicating higher rates of co-occurrence) but a lower coefficient for others (e.g. climate). However, consistently across economic, social, health and education frames, the right-leaning papers have lower coefficients (with several zero co-occurrences) than the left-leaning papers (Table 5). This is again indicative that the right-leaning press is more reluctant to cover the party in wider policy areas.

Table 5.

Jaccard’s coefficient of key search terms and policy indicator words.

Indicator word	Right-leaning newspapers	Left-leaning newspapers	Indicator word	Right-leaning newspapers	Left-leaning newspapers
Environment frame			Economic frame
Climate	0.060	0.086	Economy	0.016	0.035
Environment	0.021	0.046	Cuts	0.017	0.043
Fracking	0.062	0.036	Wage(s)	0.000	0.024
Carbon	0.039	0.033	Tax	0.021	0.043
Sustainable	0.020	0.030	Social frame
Nuclear	0.028	0.028	Social	0.013	0.040
Education frame			Welfare	0.000	0.007
Tuition	0.000	0.017	Poverty	0.000	0.014
University	0.000	0.015	Health frame
School(s)	0.000	0.016	NHS	0.000	0.019
Student(s)	0.000	0.015	Health	0.019	0.011

NHS: National Health Service.

A redder shade of green?

Analysis of individual year data shows that the environment is decreasing in its domination of policy coverage in both press releases and newspaper articles. However, environmental policy coverage remains significantly more dominant in newspapers, as illustrated in Figure 2.

Figure 2.

Environment and social welfare policy coverage.

When interviewed by the Independent on Sunday, on 31 August 2008, Caroline Lucas said she was, ‘clear about what is needed for the Greens to become Britain’s fourth political party’, and said ‘the focus must be on social justice as well as environmental issues’. Green Party press officers appear to have responded to this instruction; whereas in 2008, social welfare issues accounted for just 6% of the policy areas covered in press releases, by 2014 the policy area accounted for 18% of areas covered – a steep upward trend. Newspaper reporting of Green Party policy in this area remained essentially flat from 2008 to 2013 at 6–8% but did have an interesting jump to 13% in 2014.

Political events and Green Party coverage

This further analysis was undertaken to determine whether the Green Party is afforded the opportunity to widen the prevailing political discourse in relation to particular political events. The basic conclusion is no. The party typically announced their position in relation to the events in one or more press releases, and often explicitly in these releases illustrated how their position differed from the leading parties.

There is perhaps little to be gained in individually discussing coverage in relation to each event, as Table 6 nicely encapsulates the finding of a general paucity of coverage. Despite the party arguing for no austerity as opposed to the ‘austerity-heavy’ of the Conservatives and ‘austerity-light’ of Labour, they are almost completely ignored in Comprehensive Spending Review coverage. Similarly in coverage of the riots, their call for searching for underlying causes was not picked up. In coverage of Deepwater Horizon and the Copenhagen Climate Conference, environmental NGOs such as Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth are more prominent than the party (though Caroline Lucas did gain relatively prominent coverage related to Copenhagen). Only one newspaper carried the party’s take on the situation in Gaza. The party was afforded no voice to explain their absolute stance on NHS privatisations, or argue for a nuclear-free defence plan, or oppose High Speed Rail 2.

Table 6.

Green Party coverage and political events.

Event	Green Party press releases issued	Number of newspaper articles	Green Party references in articles	Green Party quotes^a in articles
Comprehensive Spending Review	8	415	2	0
UK riots	6	709	1	1
Copenhagen Climate Change Conference	3	632	3	1
Strategic Defence Review	1	167	0	0
Deepwater Horizon	0	335	0	0
High Speed Rail 2	3	288	0	0
Gaza	3	591	2	2
NHS	2	572	0	0

NHS: National Health Service.

Either a quote from a party official or a direct quote of a press release.

Discussion

The central aim of this research was to ascertain whether a minor political party with a traditional core issue would be seen as a sufficiently elite actor to allow it to shape its own message and influence the media agenda. The manual content analysis reveals overall consonance between the proportion of policy coverage in party press releases and press coverage. However, coverage of the two main policy areas which the party seemingly wishes to influence – the environment and social welfare issues – only partly respond to party efforts. These findings are reinforced, and indeed found to be more acute in the WordStat analysis through both a frequency and coefficient test. The mini case studies also indicate a lack of engagement with the party on several key policy issues.

There are some positive findings for the Green Party. Analysis does suggest that newspapers became more critically and positively engaged with the party over the period. However, the most obvious (and unsurprising) finding from this study is that there is a distinct difference in treatment of the party by newspapers of different ideologies. The right-leaning newspapers were less responsive to the party consistently across analyses where comparison was possible.

The findings in this study confirm Washbourne’s (2010) assertion on the role of political ideology in newspaper production. The newspapers which cover the party the most frequently also cover the party in more depth and more positively. These are all newspapers from the left-leaning grouping. It could easily be argued that the Guardian coverage in fact moves into the realm of active support of the party. It is noteworthy that, prior to becoming party leader, Natalie Bennett worked for the newspaper from 2006 to 2012.

The party barely registered in some newspapers – most noticeably the Sunday mid-market and tabloid newspapers. When the party was covered by the right-leaning press, the coverage was very rarely positive in tone. These are not surprising findings; much of the content of the Green Party manifesto is a complete anathema to conservative ideology. Spoon’s (2009) analysis of the Green Party manifesto confirms the party’s occupation of contrary ideological space. It is simply not in the interests of right-aligned editors to see a party of the left gain significant support.

The findings here do not of course indicate some form of conspiratorial alliance of conservative editors ranged against the Green Party. Their combination of indifference, negativity and pigeon-holing of the party is more likely a combination of general ideology coupled with the constraints of established journalistic practice. Bennett (1996) suggests three normative orders which dictate journalistic copy: political, economic and journalistic norms; the last includes fairness and balance. The data here suggest that balance in political coverage is seen more as a simple two-sided scale, rather than a more complex multidirectional scale, with its inherent difficulty in finding the correct point of balance. There is The Government and there is The Opposition, then there is the ‘green’ party. The (more so right-leaning) newspapers do not cede ‘issue ownership’ (Petrocik et al., 2003; Walgrave and De Swert, 2007) of anything other than the environment to the Green Party. Indeed, this work suggests that some newspapers are reluctant to cede what one may term ‘issue concern’ on some matters.

The ‘information subsidies’ from the Greens are rarely of sufficient value to include, and when they are, the associated extra cost to the party is that the subsidy should be green themed. Many journalists and editors appear to have a pre-constructed frame (De Vreese, 2009) within which to construct stories about the Green Party, and that frame is green. In fairness to the newspapers, it must also be noted that the environment accounted for 20% of policy areas covered in press releases. An analysis of Labour and Conservative press releases would unlikely yield a commensurate figure. It must be acknowledged that the Green Party is also playing a role in keeping it as the green party.

The indicative finding that the Greens also had to share and even yield the environmental platform to NGOs in instances such as coverage of Copenhagen and Deepwater Horizon is presumably another concern for the party. They may only have partial ownership of ‘their’ issue, though further specific research would be required to ascertain the validity of this finding.

A fully functioning democratic system requires a citizenry informed on the full range of options. Green Party policy, on the Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR), for example, did appear to add an alternative option. However, newspapers did not transmit this option to the electorate. Gaber’s (2009) ‘informed consent’ (p. 84) for this issue was not met if the electorate did not receive the full range of options. The media did not act as enablers of a wider debate. In this and other cases, the dissent of the Green Party was ignored – the view of The Government (who previously were The Opposition) and The Opposition (who previously were The Government) dominated.⁷ One could argue of course that the media should not be required to transmit opinion from a party which only has 1 MP out of 650. Yet, in 1966, Kirchheimer (1966) predicted that large political parties would transform into catch-all parties and move away from ideological poles. There are few who would today disagree with that as a characterisation of the UK political landscape; the parties ‘are more similar than dissimilar’ (Negrine, 2008: 2). Is the minor voice therefore requisite for democracy to enable fully informed debate?

Although this work has focused on the Green Party, the findings have implications for all minor political parties. In a 2012 interview with the Observer, United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) leader Nigel Farage was reported as, ‘acutely aware of … a sense that his party is a single-issue pressure group (a fact that he seeks to challenge by offering a range of policy ideas on everything)’ (Olmos, 2012: 11). The three-page article proceeded to then focus almost exclusively on Europe. This is of course one of the limitations of this study. It covers only one party within one media system at a particular point in time, and it is therefore not known how generalisable these results maybe. An analysis of UKIP, despite the preceding anecdote, and the fact that prima facie they appear to embrace their single-issue status, may reveal different results.

It is of course pertinent to also mention the electoral system within the United Kingdom. In the 2015 General Election, the Greens and UKIP received 1.2 million and 3.9 million votes, respectively (possibly illustrative of the relative success of UKIP’s pertinently focused strategy). Combined, these votes account for 16.4% of votes cast, yet the parties entered the new parliament with just one MP each. Under a pure Proportional Representation system, the United Kingdom would have a House of Commons with about 25 Green and 80 UKIP MPs. The First-Past-the-Post system is not kind to smaller parties.

Although newspapers do still play an important role within the UK election system, it is only one medium among many which are now used by the media to inform the electorate. In terms of newspaper coverage, one might conclude that the party’s agenda is more set than they are able to set the agenda. The UK media landscape has evolved into a partisan press, neutral broadcast model (see Patterson, 1998); the more neutral broadcast media may report the party differently. Digital and social media must also, of course, be considered. To have a full understanding of a party’s attempt to set their agenda, one must consider the full tools at their disposal. For the purposes of this study, it was appropriate to avoid election period coverage of the party, and the data appear to validate that decision. However, analysis of such coverage may also provide further illumination.

This is an area of research which has been much overlooked, the result of which is that there is still much to explore. Future research on the subject of single or core-issue parties should consider parties with differing core issues, other media environments, other electoral systems and systems of governance, and both election and non-election periods. Understanding party and election politics and political communication surrounding those issues should not be, and must not be, restricted to main parties.

The role of the media is not to establish or improve or correct the deficiencies of a democratic system. However, the media can, and perhaps should, act as enablers of healthy, informed debate to enable any conception of a public sphere to function. To return to Bennett’s (1996) normative orders, the political norm is the concept that the media does provide the populous with political information on which they can act. The UK newspaper industry has no legal, moral or even professional obligation to transmit political opinion from all political parties to the electorate. However, there is a normative requirement which, it may be argued, extends beyond the incumbent Government and Opposition. The findings here echo those of Hopmann et al. (2010) – it appears that the UK media is helping to perpetuate the self-sustaining cycle of hegemony of the main parties. Minor parties are irrelevant as they are unlikely to gain power, and therefore not granted the oxygen of publicity that might help make them relevant. This study adds to the large existing body of work which questions the role played by the media in a democratic system. However, it adds to this discussion by considering the role of the media in relation to minor or core-issue parties, and reaches some conclusions of concern for normative democracy.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

The author thanks Justin Lewis, Sue Robinson and Dhavan Shah for insightful comments on draft versions of this article and also the anonymous reviewers for their helpful input.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes

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