Learning Objectives
Who wants to hear about parliament?

After studying this unit you should be able to:

• Define the notion of newsworthiness;

• Outline what inhibits coverage of the parliamentary process and parliamentary business;

• Identify strategies to make parliamentary business and the parliamentary process more newsworthy.

Introduction and Overview

Have you ever read a news headline about government and decided it was not nearly interesting enough to warrant the time needed to complete the story? The purpose of this module is to examine how, having already established a good working relationship between parliament and the media, it is possible to make the parliamentary process and parliamentary business more newsworthy.  Only if parliamentary business and the parliamentary process are newsworthy will the media be in a position to provide the extent of coverage parliament deserves.