Spinning out of control: Alastair Campbell and the Intelligence dosslers
The very effective use of media management or 'spin' in the example discussed above shows its significance and importance in domestic political issues. Interestingly, with
respect to issues which step outside the domestic political arena. attempts to manage and control media agendas have been much less successful. Two recent examples highlight this: s the debate over joining the euro zone and the2003 was against Ieaq.one from a media management management perspective, is the fact that there are many more actors (partners/opponents/neutral states) involved in these events. These other actors may have different priorities and, of course, have their own domestic media to manage, thus bow events are represented in the British media are of minor importance to them.
Taking the 2003 conflict in Iraq' example, it could be that the has able for managing of their been significantly damaged. Attempts to apply media management techniques which have served them well domestically, such as the positioning of key sound bites and the dissemination of 'source material' for the media to consume and reproduce, has in fact had the effect of turning media attention on the whole apparatus of spin itself. This has had disastrous consequences for the Blair administration and in particular for the man who became known as the "spinmeister", Alastair Campbell, who has been forced to resign as the British Prime Minister's Communications Director
McNair (1998: 143 ) notes that a key ‘extramedia’ factor in influencing media agendas and media content is the production of sources, so that media agendas and seen to be "in significant part the product of the communicative work of non-journalistic Miller and Williams (1993: 3) note that any attempt to understand n the coverage and how news agendas and content emerge makes it 'necessary to examine The strategies formulated by sources of information to influence and use the news media. source professional', points out, is a significant in the twentieth the wake media's rapid expansion, feeding the lanersinsa. tiable desire for new material to package as news and entertainment' (199 143). the adds that the source professional is 'engaged in a fiercely competitive struggle with journalists to define the terms of media coverage' (ibid.: 144 )
Nations need reasons to go to war and in democratic societies there is usually the recognition by governments that the majority of the public must be convinced that these reasons are legitimate. In the build up to the 2003 Iraqi conflict the British government needed to communicate its reasons for going to war effectively to the British public This is the context of the intelligence dossiers which were released to the press on 24 September 2002 and 3 February 2003. These documents set out the reasons why, according to the British government, it was necessary to take action against Saddam Hussein's regime .
Tony Blair himself explained the genesis of the September 2002 dossier in the fore- word to that document :
document published today is based, in large part, on the work of the Joint Intelligence Committee (Jic. The JIC is at the heart of It is chaired by the Cabinet office and made up of the heads of the UK's three Intelligence and Security Agencies, the Chief of Defence and senior officials from key government departments
(Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction The Assessment of the British Government)