Electoral politics is the only terrain television grants legitimacy as political

Evidence

We can now better understand what one news commentator meant when he observed, apropos the withdrawal of opposition MP s from Stormont, that both Whitehall and Stormont were anxious to bring them “back into politics.” The rent strikes, civil defense marches, and other actions were in that instant delegitimated as political acts. Television and radio do not, therefore, offer “only one point of view.” But by operating balance within a given structure , television tacitly maintains the prevailing definition of the political order. That is, in one and the same moment, it expresses and contains conflict. It reproduces unwittingly the structure of institutionalized class conflict on which the system depends. It thereby legitimates the prevailing structure of interests, while scrupulously observing “balance between the parties.” It also, incidentally, offers a favorable image of the system as a system, precisely, “open to conflict” and to alternative “points of view.” It is this last twist which keeps the structure flexible and credible. — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 864

Categorization

• XREF: Directly echoes Hall’s Gramscian conception of hegemony and the Frankfurt School’s culture-industry analysis; also parallels modern electoral moderation debates. — connects to: Mandatory-jokey political TV actively deters the politically engaged audience — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 739
• DEEPTHINKING: The claim that flexibility and apparent openness is precisely what keeps a power structure credible is a subtle, reusable analytical point.