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Friends or Enemies? The British Press and the European Union

By Douglas Bicket
Published in Ecquid Novi, Autumn 1997

THIS special topic is abstracted from a paper of mine that was published in the Autumn 1997 edition of Ecquid Novi, the South African journal of communications and journalism (and originally presented at the International Communications Association, Mass Communications Division, Montreal, Canada, May 24, 1997). Its subject matter deals with many of the issues raised elsewhere in this site, including hegemony, semiotics, discourse analysis, and intertextuality.

Abstract:
As the European Union increases its role and influence in the affairs of the United Kingdom, a member state, the British press is reflecting and articulating a sense of opposition to this development felt by some centers of power in the UK. In this context, the press sees the preservation of a strong, ethnocentric sense of national identity among British subjects as an essential shield with which to fend off the "Europeanization" of Britain. This paper analyzes and defines the textual limits of a dominant anti-EU construct in the British press; it argues that a constructed sense of "British" national identity, promoted by the press, feeds off a construct of Europe that is fundamentally false and negative. Within this construct, the press is a major conduit and manipulator of anti-European (or at least anti-European unification) discourses. The press continually repeats, reinforces, and magnifies these discourses in its reporting on British trade, economic, and foreign policy in relation to the EU, and passes them on to its readership. In the press’s model of British-EU relations, the UK's relationship with Germany is central to its relationship with the rest of the Union, and a strong anti-German discourse lies at the heart of the press's anti-Europeanism. In its emphasis on European news from an anti-European perspective, the press maintains this construct within narrow, manageable limits.

Introduction

The subject of this paper is a critical and quantitative analysis of the views portrayed and disseminated by the contemporary British press on the European Union. Drawing on the historical background of Britain’s relationship with the European mainland, as well as the press’s relationship with the British establishment, an overall picture of the press’s discourses and ideologies in relation to Europe, and in particular to Germany, will be built up. In examining news stories, editorials, and commentaries from a selection of British national and regional newspapers, prominent discourses and images related by the press will be examined, as well as the apparent linguistic and formal characteristics which underscore them, to help explain why the European Union is covered by the press in the way that it is, and point to some of the forces at work in the production of news in Britain. The aim is to answer the question of how the press describes and articulates Britain’s relations with the European Union, particularly with regard to Germany.

UNDER CONSTRUCTION/TO BE CONTINUED ...

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