Policy failure or moral scandal? Political accountability, journalism and new public management

In: Media, Culture & Society, Volume 35, Issue 8, p. 960-976

Abstract

Political accountability is fundamental in a democratic society. Societal changes such as the marketization of the public sector have, however, made accountability issues complex and negotiable. The question of who is to be held to account for policy failures is increasingly a subject of struggle within the media. The aim of this article is to examine how journalism does "accountability work" in a political setting marked by new public management. The empirical study focuses on an example of intensive news coverage of the mistreatment of elderly people in private health care, in Sweden, 2011. A corpus of 156 news items is analyzed. The analysis focuses on the use of accountability interviews, and how journalism constructs boundaries of political accountability by framing social problems. In general, the study shows that the political accountability work carried out was weak and restricted, the problems were constructed as a moral scandal instead of a policy failure.