Are our politicians becoming more corrupt or does the media just make it seem so?

Political corruption dominates headlines, yet very few of us experience it directly. Most of what we hear, and therefore believe, about it comes from newspapers, television, and social media. UK politics is beset by allegations of impropriety; it has been for as long as I can remember, and of course long before that. How, then, do media stories shape our perception of political integrity and accountability?

Impropriety in government is not a modern phenomenon. Robert Walpole, who came to be regarded as Britain's first Prime Minister, had previously been impeached and imprisoned, and continued to face persistent accusations throughout his career that he maintained power through patronage, financial influence, and cronyism. Whether those accusations amount to corruption in the modern sense is debatable, but they clearly demonstrate that integrity in British political life has been questionable for centuries. So why does it feel like there is more of it today than previously? I can personally claim ignorance for most of my life, having been apolitical, not owning a television nor being an avid news consumer. But all that changed with the rise of smartphones and social media, which provide a constant stream of updates and provocative headlines that shape how we perceive levels of corruption. It makes great news: ‘cash for questions’, the ‘revolving door’ of politics and big business, the ‘expenses scandal’, ‘duck houses’. These things grab our attention, sell papers, claim ownership of our eyeballs.

And here is the crux of the issue: corruption by its very nature is hidden from view. I have never experienced political corruption directly and I would suggest that most of the public have not either, not directly anyway. Therefore, we are reliant on the media to inform us about both its occurrence and prevalence. An Italian paper, ‘Persuadable perceptions: the effect of media content on beliefs about corruption’, makes this point arguing that:

“the case of corruption is also one in which individuals rarely have direct experience of the phenomenon and thus primarily base their beliefs about its magnitude on the public signals they receive.”

No surprise there. But this makes corruption a rather special news case because it is a predominantly mediated experience, unlike potholes, the lack of dentists, or public transport woes, all of which we experience directly. However, the paper also notes that the perceptions of corruption produced by media reporting are short-lived since human attention is a limited resource, and our attention is therefore focused on the most salient issues. So it should come as no surprise that the here and now feels subjectively more of a pertinent issue to the public consciousness than the faded memories of yesteryear. So might it be the case that every generation feels corruption is more prevalent in its own time? History suggests political corruption is nothing new. What has changed, though, is how often we hear about it and how quickly those stories shape our perception of political life.

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