The Westminster Lobby Correspondents

The Westminster Lobby correspondents have a special place in both the politics and the mass media of Britain. These journalists dominate the behind-the-scenes reporting of British national politics. In this book, originally published in 1970, Jeremy Tunstall presents the first systematic social science study of the uniquely British phenomenon of Lobby correspondents.The study includes data collected from interviews with the national Lobby correspondents, who also completed lengthy questionnaires. It contains evidence of their careers, political opinions, pay, working conditions, relationships with their employing news organization and political news sources, and on the way in which the correspondents both compete with, and exchange information with, each other. As well as this fascinating empirical data, the book offers an important contribution to the sociology of politics and the mass media, and to the study of ‘organizational intelligence’ and the sociology of occupations.There had long centred upon the Lobby correspondents many myths and misconceptions, which Jeremy Tunstall effectively demolishes. (The so-called ‘Lobby rules’ were here published for the first time.) Other real dilemmas are, however, revealed: the competing demands of publicity and secrecy; the dilemmas of British politics in which basic principles – such as Parliamentary supremacy and Cabinet secrecy – are daily breached, not only by the correspondents, but also by leading politicians; and the problems of a system of political communication whose obsession with daily news values is so similar to official and academic contributions. With media and politics still very much linked today, this reissue can be read and enjoyed in its historical context.