Politician appearing after special news item (5)
I believe the answer is:
story
'news item' is the definition.
(thesaurus)
'politician appearing after special' is the wordplay.
'politician' becomes 'tory' (I've seen this before).
'appearing after' is a charade indicator (letters next to each other).
'special' becomes 's' (common abbreviation as in Special Air Service).
'tory' after 's' is 'STORY'.
(Other definitions for story that I've seen before include "Rumour" , "Narration" , "Narrative or account" , "Tale - lie" , "See 10 and 19" .)