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Framing the cuts: An analysis of the BBC’s discursive framing of the ConDem cuts agenda

2013; SAGE Publishing; Volume: 15; Issue: 6 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1177/1464884913501835

1741-3001

Jilly Boyce Kay, Lee Salter,

Social Policy and Reform Studies

This study analyses the discursive framing of the British government’s economic policies by BBC News Online. Specifically, it focuses on the coverage of the government’s Comprehensive Spending Review in 2010, in which the details of the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s broader ‘austerity’ agenda were released. Using frame analysis informed by critical theory, we analyse three online BBC features and compare their framing of the economic crisis – and the range of possible policy responses to it – with that of the government’s. In addition, we analyse editorial blogs and training materials associated with the BBC’s special ‘Spending Review season’; we also situate the analysis in the historical context of the BBC’s relationship with previous governments at moments of political and economic crisis. Contrary to dominant ideas that the BBC is biased to the left, our findings suggest that its economic journalism discursively normalises neoliberal economics, not necessarily as desirable, but certainly as inevitable.