"Media coverage of the single currency in Britain: An assessment of television news in the first year of the Euro"

Gavin, Neil T. (2001) "Media coverage of the single currency in Britain: An assessment of television news in the first year of the Euro" . In European Union Studies Association (EUSA) > Biennial Conference > 2001 (7th), May 31-June 2, 2001, pages 15, Madison, Wisconsin.

Abstract

This paper will focus on television coverage of the single currency in its initial phase, from December 1998 to January 2000. The corpus of news analysed is drawn from the flagship evening bulletins of the BBC and ITN. The paper explores a number of questions. How salient was news about the euro? How does television deal with the issue of Britain's distance from the economic community that 'Euroland' now represents (i.e., what did television tell the public as the pros and cons of British involvement and non-involvement)? A particular focus here will be the issue of tax harmonization-the extent to which this was cast as a threat to the British sovereignty and the manner in which it is seen to constitute a threat to the legitimacy of further moves towards European economic integration. The paper also looks at the extent to which news about the euro is refracted through the prism of domestic party-political debate. Finally, the decline in the value of the euro is assessed, with particular emphasis on how television explained and accounted for the drop, but it will also assess the manner in which the coverage handled the issue of euro interest rate decision-making. The domestic political implications of the structure of coverage are explored and the paper will finish with an assessment of what the analysis tells us in terms of a prospective 'media impact' research agenda.