“True Believer,” “Legal Advocate,” or “Committed Expert”: Parliamentary Media Advising and Practitioner Conceptions of Partisanship

Abstract

The parliamentary media adviser is commonly portrayed as a partisan “spin-doctor,” with little distinction made between the inherent partisan nature of the role and the personal partisanship of the practitioner. Semistructured qualitative interviews with 21 journalists who became parliamentary media advisers highlight the difference between the two and offer practitioner perceptions of the advantages and disadvantages of partisanship in that role. At one extreme is the “true believer”; at the other is the “legal advocate,” with the “committed expert” in between. In doing so, this article challenges the simple, dominant conception of the partisan “spin-doctor.”