Government advertising and the politics of fear

Grant Shapps, has accused Labour of using the Government’s Central Office of Information’s (COI) taxpayer funded budget to make up the gap in their election coffers.

For those that don’t know COI is the government advertising and marketing arm, they are the ones that are responsible for commissioning all of those awful government campaigns on television (and in the press and on billboards), such as the don’t eat salt, eat healthily, quit smoking, and stop climate change campaigns. Generally the quality of them is terrible, but they’re always there.

Or at least since Labour came to power they’ve always been there. Grant Shapps revealed that in 1998 COI advertising spending was £59 million, whereas in 2009 it rose to a new record of £232 million, a 39% increase over the previous year.

The government is defending this by saying that during the recession COI spending has been vital to the the advertising industry, and indeed at one point when the recession first hit it seemed like there were no other adverts than goverenment ones, and that clearly the ad industry would collapse without a “government bail-out”. However Grant Shapps has challenged this ascertation by pointing out there were similar spikes in spending before the 2001 and 2005 elections.

Having the trappings of being the incumbent is extremely useful inside an election campaign, note for example how Brown et al always appear in front of a government department logo, not a Labour one, when announcing policy initiatives or briefing the press. However I think this is a somewhat cynical abuse of their position. By increasing advertising spending it makes it look like the government is doing something to tackle issues like climate change, the effects of smoking on individuals and the NHS, swine flu etc when actually all it’s doing is telling the population not to do something.

The last year has also seen COI’s output go into a fear over drive. Nearly every campaign in the past 12 months has played on fear, and nearly always fear in relation to your children. From the climate change advert featuring a father telling their children a scary story about the effects of climate change, and of course showing how your cute dog will drown. Right through to the stop smoking campaigns which featured smoke coming out of a child’s mouth when they breathed (passive smoking you see) or just a cute child saying “please stop smoking daddy, I don’t want you to die.”

COI’s output has matched the governments own politics of fear, some would say that COI is in fact the government's propaganda arm, controlling the population through fear and ensuring they stay in line with government policy and ideology.

The same politics of fear are beginning to pervade the election campaign as well, reminders of the 80s and the last recession, scaremongering about the effects of Tory cuts, actors coming out and saying they couldn’t think of anything worse than a Conservative government. It’s an old tactic, but it seems to be Labour’s favourite.

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The Snowstorm Plot: Bloggers 1 - Mainstream Media 0

Yesterday’s failed attempt to oust Brown as Labour Leader is almost certiainly the beginning of a turning point in how this election will be reported, with bloggers and Twitter users breaking the story well before the mainstream media picked up on it.

As early as Tuesday Night Guido Fawkes was hearing rumours that a cabinet level move to oust Brown may be made against Gordon Brown, and continued to firm up rumours reporting them to his web readers and Twitter followers.

The next day on Daily Politics BBC Political editor Nick Robinson was asked the question
“I keep hearing rumours of a leadership challenge. I know nothing all all this stuff. Should I believe any of it?” to which he replied “No you shouldn’t it’s rubbish and isn’t going to happen.”

He then went on to blame bloggers and Twitter users, showing his utter contempt and his condescending manner towards the non mainstream media that is increasingly shaping the reporting of this election rather than himself

“..yesterday was an illustration of the madness we might get into with blogging and tweeting and all the rest of it, bit of gossip, reported reasonably by one or two people turns into poor old Tessa Jowell having to deny she was resigning.... and that then runs on the internet as if it was a real story, and it’s not.”

Then saying in possibly his most condescending tone (which is very condescending indeed)

“In the era of what we’re told is the revolution in journalism, blogging, by some of our friends outside, this becomes what they call a story.”

Of course during PMQs the now infamous letters / emails / texts went from Hoon and Hewitt to all members of the Parliamentary Labour Party, kicking off a leadership challenge. The rumored cabinet level resignation never happened. However there definitely was a leadership challenge, which was what the blogosphere and Twitterverse was lit up by, and the mainstream media continued to deny.

I don’t think that this will be the last story in this election campaign to be broken online first, and ignored as irrelevant by the mainstream media, but I suspect it has been somewhat of a wake up call to those in the media who have looked down on their blogging cousins previously.

However I wasn’t surprised to see a tweet from a sky journalist, although admittedly from Sky News online, poking fun at the way Guido and Tory Bear were joking about picking up Iain Dale's TV punditing for the day.

Of course Guido’s caustic reply said it all for where this election is going

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