“Back the Bid”

Michel Foucault’s Concept of Discourse

The analysis offered below is broadly Foucauldian in nature. According to Foucault, statements—the basic units from which discourses are built—are defined and contextualized by the institution that gives them their “status” in comparison to other statements (p. 115). Yet one of the conditions characteristic of the statement is that of a vacant subject position that “may be filled in certain conditions by various individuals” (Foucault, 2002, p. 129). This allows the statement to be repetitively articulated by a variety of subjects—in this case Jackie Brock-Doyle, Head of PR and Media for the London Olympic Bid Committee (LOBC), journalists of the Sun, politicians, and so on—across numerous surfaces of emergence.

The status of a statement is however “never definite, but modifiable, relative, and susceptible of being questioned” (Foucault, 2002, p. 115). Statements are thus “produce[d], manipulate[d], use[d], transform[ed], exchange[d], combine[d], decompose[d], and recompose[d], and possibly destroyed” in pursuit of particular interests (Foucault, 2002, p. 118). For Foucault, the statement thus “participates in challenge and struggle, and becomes a theme of appropriation or rivalry” (p. 118).

Consequently, a process of institutionalized discursive warfare takes place in which the most dominant statements surrounding a particular topic form a discursive norm or discourse and become the way to think or talk about the topic in question. A discourse is therefore characterized by rarity as the limited number of statements that form a pattern and represent a discursive formation is only a small fraction of the numerous dispersion of statements that could have formed the discourse. For Foucault (2002), a discourse can thus “be defined as the group of statements that belong to a single system of formation” (p. 121).

Method

A qualitative interview was conducted with Jackie Brock-Doyle to identify the discourse that she sought to communicate to the host urban population of the United Kingdom and to establish how she and her team sought to influence the domestic media to articulate that discourse to the U.K. public. To determine whether and, more importantly, how the domestic media carried the discourse of the LOBC to the host urban population the study also focused on the U.K. newspaper with the greatest readership—the Sun (IPSOS-RSL, 2003, 2004).

Using the electronic database News UK, the search London AND 2012 AND Olympic* AND bid* OR Games generated 66 articles relating to London’s bid for the 2012 Olympics printed by the Sun between May 15, 2003, when London’s decision to bid for the Games was announced, and November 15, 2004, when London’s Candidate City File was submitted to the IOC.

The method of discourse analysis was used to explore the text constructed during the interview with Brock-Doyle and the Sun’s coverage of London’s bid. Following Foucault (2002, pp. 119-141), the analysis involved describing the statements that were articulated by Brock-Doyle and the Sun, considering why the statements surrounding the bid emerged when they did rather than any of the many alternatives available, and looking for regularities within the statements that could be said to form the discourse of the LOBC and the discourse of the sun so that they could be compared to ascertain whether the Sun (re)presented, restructured, or challenged the discourse of the LOBC.

“Back the Bid”

During her interview, Jackie Brock-Doyle, Head of PR and Media for the LOBC (hereafter Brock-Doyle), stressed that “public support is vital” to satisfy the criteria of the IOC, who conduct two polls during the bidding period to assess the level of public backing for the Games in each of the countries with a city bidding to host the Olympics. According to Brock-Doyle, the LOBC believed that “some of the cities” bidding for the Games were likely to fare better than London in the IOC’s polls as “Britain is a very slow bird when it comes to supporting big things.” Rather than being “left to the vagaries of an international poll” conducted by the IOC, the LOBC wanted “to build up numbers of people who could physically say: I support this.”

The LOBC sought to gain such backing by instilling the host urban population with “a sense of pride,” she said. Comparing the bid to “a perfume brand,” Brock-Doyle, articulating the key statement that the LOBC sought to convey to the U.K. public, suggested that the Games would “make Britain proud”—if London won against the other major cities bidding for the Games. The domestic communications campaign was thus not only used to foster national pride but to emphasize the fact that London was “up against the rest of the world to win.”

Brock-Doyle explained that although a communications campaign aimed at winning a bid would normally “try to deliver a very singular message,” the LOBC also had “an international theme—“Sport at Heart,” which was about “inspiring the next generation, and inspiring young people to choose sport.” According to Brock-Doyle, this was also “a kind of core narrative” of the bid that “worked well” with the Make Britain Proud campaign that called for the host urban population to “Back the Bid.”

She explained that a range of initiatives were organized around this “call for action”: The LOBC “took a giant flag around the country for people to sign,” there were online campaigns “where people could sign the flag,” and a range of activities were organized in conjunction with partners such as EDF Energy who “did these leap counters that people could jump through to show their support.” The result was that the LOBC “were able to go to Singapore during the bid and say to everybody there that five million people in the UK had actually physically done something to show their support.”

According to Brock-Doyle, the mainstream media in the United Kingdom “played a big role” in helping to gain such support and were “terrific” during the bidding period. In particular, she drew attention to the “amazing support” provided by the BBC and the “strong support” provided by “the big news organizations” that, she said, the LOBC relied “quite heavily” on to take “the message out to people.” Brock-Doyle explained that to gain the backing of the media, it is important to “talk to them, spend time with them, [and] make sure they understand.” With this in mind, she stressed the importance of being “clear, consistent, and open, and honest.”

Brock-Doyle said she believes that it is also “very important to choose moments where you can get all of the media behind. A moment in time to get everybody excited because it does have an impact.” In her view, the LOBC thus “had a very detailed strategy that looked at the specific milestones along the bid journey and [they] set [their] comm[unication]s strategy to support them.” The key moments during the bidding process that were highlighted by Brock-Doyle were the submission of the applicant city questionnaire to the IOC in January 2004 and the submission of the Candidate City File and unveiling of the blueprint of the Games to the host urban population in November of the same year.

The saturation level of the Sun’s coverage did indeed increase when the bid reached these milestones. My research thus supports Chen’s (1998) contention that newspaper coverage of Olympic bids increases in saturation at key moments throughout the bidding process (p. 306). The other key milestones in the bid journey indicated by the Sun’s increased saturation of coverage are the announcement of London’s decision to bid for the Games in May 2003 and the IOC’s revelation of the cities that had been chosen as “candidates” to host the Games in May 2004.

During these key moments in the bidding process, the Sun articulated the LOBC’s statement that the Games will make Britain proud in editorials stating that the Olympics “will be a fantastic opportunity to show the world our vision, enthusiasm, skills, industry, culture and love of life” (“Go for It!” May 16, 2003, p. 8), or in other words—to the show “the world what a great country we are” (“Going for Gold,” January 17, 2004, p. 6). In addition to the “institutional voice of the newspaper” (Keeble, 2001, p. 96) articulating the LOBC’s statement that the Games will make Britain proud, the Sun’s journalists attempted to legitimate the statement by informing readers that “Ministers” (Pascoe-Watson, May 16, 2003, p. 72) and Olympic medalist Jonathan Edwards shared the same view (Orvice, May 16, 2003, p. 72). Lest such elite opinion fail to sway the Sun’s (mostly) working-class readers, journalist Wooding attempted to influence them to back the bid by showing that the same supportive subject position based on the pride associated with staging the Games was occupied by “Jack Dromey, a candidate to lead the giant Transport and General Workers Union,” who was quoted as saying that the Olympics are “a showcase for all that is best in our country and its capital” (Wooding, May 16, 2003, p. 8).

In addition to articulating and legitimating the LOBC’s statement that the U.K. public should Back the Bid because the Games will make Britain proud, the Sun presents a number of statements that appear to have been developed from this key statement. These can be listed as follows:

The Sun: Ardent Supporter of London’s Bid for the 2012 Games

As the previous discussion illustrates, the Sun’s coverage of London’s bid for the 2012 Olympics was predominantly supportive. This view was shared by Brock-Doyle who professed that the Sun was “terrific” and “hugely supportive of the bid.” Indeed, of the 66 articles relating to London’s bid that were published by the Sun between May 15, 2003, when it was announced that London would bid for the Games, and November 15, 2004, when London’s Candidate City File was submitted to the IOC, only one was completely critical of the bid and it was published after London had already been short-listed as a Candidate City (Littlejohn, August 17, 2004, p. 11). It therefore seems that the Sun may have been attempting to minimize dissent prior to the Candidate City selection by presenting a favorable view of the bid.

This idea seems to be buttressed by the fact that there were no articles documenting the work or views of the local activist group “NoLondon2012,” thus supporting Lenskyj’s (1999) contention that since the perspectives of such organizations are “incompatible with the interests of corporate and government elites” that the media seems to support, they are “managed and contained” to curtail opposition (p. 78). Given that such groups “heavily rely” on the mainstream media to “promote their causes” (Adi, 2010, para. 2), the Sun’s failure to do so suggests that it is hardly surprising that the NoLondon2012 campaign was unsuccessful as the readers of the U.K. newspaper with the greatest readership were not provided with a full view.

The Sun’s lack of critical commentary is perhaps not surprising given that the institutional voice of the newspaper made the Sun’s allegiance explicit from the outset informing the newspaper’s readers that “the Sun has no hesitation in backing the Olympic bid” (“Go for It!” May 16, 2003, p. 8). the Sun was at that time edited by “Rebekah Wade (now Rebekah Brooks)” and she was in Brock-Doyle’s words “a big supporter of [the LOBC] winning the Games.” According to Brock-Doyle, the LOBC and the Sun thus “did things together, [the Sun] did things on their own”—such as constructing the bid as a sporting competition between London and Paris or Britain and France as mentioned previously—and the LOBC “spent a lot of time with the Sun’s editorial team explaining what [they] were trying to do and why [they] were doing it.”

The Sun’s support for the bid can therefore be attributed to the newspaper’s editorial control and collaboration with the LOBC. Given that the Olympics are a major source of content and revenue for the media (Girginov & Parry, 2009, p. 68), it is perhaps not surprising that Rebekah Brooks backed the bid. Yet, since the sun has always adopted a British-patriotic perspective that is typical of U.K. tabloid newspapers (Conboy, 2006, p. 9), it seems that the LOBC’s statement of national pride also suited the sentiment of the sun, not least because it could be manipulated into a statement of nationalistic rivalry between Britain and France allowing the sun to mobilize a long-standing narrative that its readers enjoy.

Conclusion

This article clearly illustrates Foucault’s (2002) contention that the statement is “produce[d], manipulate[d], use[d], transform[ed], exchange[d], combine[d], decompose[d], and recompose[d]” while the limited number of statements that can be said to belong to a discursive formation are repetitively articulated by a variety of subjects across numerous surfaces of emergence (pp. 118-129), of which the text constructed during my interview with Jackie-Brock Doyle and the Sun newspaper are here but two examples. The statements articulated by the Sun’s journalists and editorial team show the newspaper to be an ardent supporter of London’s bid for the 2012 Games that attempted to influence its readers to “Back the Bid.”

As my analysis illuminates, the statements that the Sun conveyed to its readers in pursuit of this goal appear to have been developed around the core statement of pride that the LOBC sought to communicate to the host urban population to gain their support. This can perhaps be attributed to the fact that the LOBC and the Sun worked closely with one another. However, as mentioned previously, the LOBC’s statement of pride also suited the sentiment of the Sun, not least because it could be manipulated and transformed into a statement of nationalistic rivalry allowing the Sun to mobilize a narrative that has proved popular with its readers in the past.

Consequently, it seems that the LOBC’s statement of pride was more likely to sell newspapers and was therefore better suited to the Sun’s financial interests than a statement of “inspiration” that the tabloid’s predominantly working-class readers were unlikely to accept. By illustrating Foucault’s (2002) contention that the statement “serves or resists various interests” (p. 118), this study adds to the emerging body of knowledge, or discourse, which suggests that collusion and tension between the discourses and practices of bid committees and those of journalists affects the statements presented to the host urban population through the domestic media coverage of mega-event bids.

Given that the Sun was ideologically aligned with the Labour Party –who are traditionally supportive of the field of leisure to which events such as the Olympics belong—during the period of time that was analyzed, it would have been interesting to compare the sun’s coverage of the bid with the coverage in a traditionally right-wing newspaper. Moreover, given that the sun is a national tabloid newspaper it would have been illuminating to have included a local newspaper and a broadsheet newspaper in the analysis. Similarly, it would have been valuable to analyze the Metro, the free newspaper with the highest number of U.K. readers, to consider the statements articulated to the members of the host urban population who do not buy a newspaper.

It would also have been prudent to interview the editor of the Sun newspaper in order to present her view on the journalistic practice surrounding the coverage of London’s bid for the 2012 Olympic Games. Furthermore, since Lenskyj (1999) suggests that the mainstream media reflect the interests of political and corporate elites and manage and contain views that are opposed to such interests to minimize dissent (p. 78), it would be worthwhile exploring the more democratic new media’s construction of London’s bid for the 2012 Olympics and comparing the analysis with that of the mainstream media. Such research was out with the scope of this study and can be seen as recommendations for further research.