Description
This paper interrogates the relationship between the media and the state with regards to how the news media operates in the United Kingdom, and particularly when it comes to reporting on ‘terrorism’. I identify five distinct factors (organisational/editorial control, closeness and access, ‘what the reader wants,’ resources, and impartiality) that affect how news media organisations operate, their motivations, and how this leads to co-optation by the state in their reporting, particularly on ‘terrorism’. Together, all five factors demonstrate how these institutions are inherently structured by the state’s interests (particularly the government). Furthermore, this article also displays the ways in which these factors are structured into the workings of the institution – they are rarely explicit decisions. Based on semi-structured interviews, as well as primary and secondary research, I highlight these factors as areas where it might seem that media institutions have “relative autonomy” (in the words of Stuart Hall), and detail how that autonomy is structured and influenced by the colonial interests of the state. Ultimately, this paper provides a rigorous empirical understanding of how news media comes to be influenced by, and in service of, the interests of the state, as those interests often align with their own.
