City Politics and the Press: Journalists and the Governing of Merseyside

Concern about the relationship between government and the people is often popularly expressed in calls for greater public participation in decision making. However, although the press is clearly central to this relationship, the debate on the role and influence of the local press on city government and politics has often been seriously hindered by a lack of detailed information. Mr Cox and Dr Morgan improved this situation in their detailed 1973 study of the role of the provincial daily and weekly press in the life of a community. The central part of their book examines the ways in which six daily and weekly papers reported the affairs of the English conurbation of Merseyside during the 1960s. They begin by examining the general, social, political and economic setting of these newspapers and then turn to the particular situation of each individual paper. There follows a quantitative analysis both of their coverage of local politics and the ways in which various political topics were treated.