News We Can Use? Framing Lite-Bite Politics.

The twin professions of journalism and politics share more or less equal billing at the bottom of the league table of public confidence. Journalists exercise their investigative skills hanging around public toilets hoping to scoop a hapless politician. Senators (ab)use their position by doing favours to strategically useful contacts. Whilst not condoning the latter, should we be worried about the former? This paper looks at the ways in which politicians are framed (in all senses of the word) by news media, drawing on semi-structured interviews with 61 Members of the New Zealand Parliament, including the Prime Minister. This evidence suggests that whilst parliamentarians are sanguine about media intrusion at a personal level, they are concerned with the impact of 'lite-bite' or human interest forms of political reporting. The dynamics of framing are perceived to shape the public's view of politics and, by implication, effectively condition what counts as effective democracy. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]