Tag Archives: general election

#ge2010 Who do you think were the journalism winners?

You could be forgiven for forgetting who was at the centre of this general election campaign.

As blogger Max Atkinson noted, the BBC 10 o’clock news ran a seven and a half minute report on Monday’s Citizens UK event, with 22 seconds from each of the leaders’ speeches; and 123 seconds of political editor Nick Robinson. Private Eye reported in its latest issue that one onlooker wasn’t sure which Nick was going to make the speech during one part of the Lib Dem election trail.

And of course, the thought that it might not be Us Wot Won It has sent newspaper journalists and bosses into election influence overdrive: storming newspaper offices and frontpage scaremongering like crazy.

So, forget about the politicians and their wives, which journalist has done it for you during the general election coverage?

Tomorrow morning we’ll be running a few polls to establish just that. But first we need some nominations. Here are the categories:

  • Best political journalist
  • Best political blogger
  • Best political tweeter
  • Most sycophantic political coverage
  • Biggest election blunder (journalistic!)

Please comment below, or send nominations by tweet (@journalismnews) or email: judith [at] journalism.co.uk. NB: Category suggestions also welcomed.

Vicious fights and low stakes: the difficulties of covering a student election

Henry Kissinger once remarked: “University politics are vicious precisely because the stakes are so small.” It is a quote regularly bandied about in the midst of student union elections, which can be bitter. Dirty politics rears its ugly head in university and college election campaigns as often as it does in mainstream politics.

We in the student media are part of the same game. The hunger for news stories which will excite our readers means that controversy created by fall-outs between candidates is often a gift. The concentration on personality involved in a student election is just the same as we have seen during this general election. We are just as likely to publicise the vicious side of a campaign in order to extract exciting stories from a game with stakes as low as Kissinger believed them to be. But is the role of a student journalist the same as those covering and commenting on parliamentary and council elections, or do student publications have different responsibilities? Similarly, is the level of responsibility that comes with unregulated student media something that should be given to student journalists?

Most university campuses in Britain are served by no more than two student newspapers, meaning that we are faced with a lack of plurality. There is very seldom the equivalent of the range of political sympathy we have across the national press. If a student paper decides to show bias towards a candidate in a student election, the effect on the electorate can be significant. Taking sides in this respect can stifle discussion and debate, giving one candidate an unfair advantage.

Student media should be careful to ensure that bias does not suppress fair coverage and debate in these elections. Student politicians standing for office deserve to have their policies scrutinised and should be open to criticism and comment from the press. It is undesirable for the student press to run campaigns similar to those we see in the tabloids, backing one party and smearing others. The media plays an important role in questioning all elected representatives and holding them to account – a key part of the democratic process.

The emphasis should be on balance. It is important for democracy that student voters are given the opportunity to read news about candidates and are given the opportunity to question them. Journalists should be allowed to scrutinise and where appropriate query policy. However, personal attacks are a hindrance to fair elections, they damage the reputation of student journalism and undermine its function.

A number of student newspapers are constitutionally bound to provide fair and accurate coverage by the students’ unions that fund them. Where these unions do have control over the paper constitutionally, they can refuse to allow the papers to be distributed on their premises.

In a recent case at Edinburgh Napier university, copies of Napier Students’ Association funded Veritas were removed from campus because they were deemed to give one candidate in the elections there an unfair advantage over another. This came only days after Edinburgh-wide student newspaper the Journal was almost removed from university buildings because of an article reporting on a motion of no-confidence in the NSA President, who was standing for re-election at the time. The decision was taken by the Association’s election committee, apparently to ensure that no bias towards one candidate was communicated to the electorate. This was an example of ‘impartiality’ becoming an obstacle – the offending article in this case did not take sides and was a standard news report. Students’ right to know the news and issues surrounding the election of their representatives was curtailed.

Student politics often suffers from a lack of engagement. During my involvement in student media, I have seen editors strive to provide the most engaging coverage of student elections, often with little response. However, student media coverage of the political process at universities is one of the ways in which the electorate are given an opportunity to connect with the system beyond the often-cliquey doors of students’ union buildings. Where reporting is responsible and legal, it should not be subject to filtering from bureaucrats who think it may be damaging.

If the students’ unions themselves are to mediate in these cases, it is essential that criticism and questioning of candidates and representatives is allowed. Most adhere to this and would only intervene in the event of a serious breach, but the existence of an independent arbitrator would also be of benefit for disputes between newspapers and unions.

The Press Complaints Commission or the National Union of Students could issue guidelines on reporting and deal with complaints before drastic measures like removing copies of a publication are taken. This would create a set of rules to be followed and give both sides a port of call when things go wrong. Student journalism would have an increased sense of responsibility and reporting would better serve the electorate, helping to curb the kind of vicious campaigning to which Kissinger refers.

Nick Eardley is deputy editor of Edinburgh University student newspaper the Journal.

Independent journalist attacked while investigating voting fraud

A journalist investigating voting fraud in the UK was attacked yesterday while on a reporting job.

Jerome Taylor was repeatedly punched and kick by the group of attackers, who approached him in Bow, east London, where Taylor was looking to speak to a local election candidate about allegations of postal vote fraud.

He describes the ordeal in an article on Independent.co.uk today:

I don’t know how long it lasted – it was probably only a minute – but it was a long minute. I don’t remember them saying anything as they did it. The first noise I was aware of was the beeping of a car horn and a woman screaming.

The noise brought a man out of a nearby block of flats. With little regard for his own safety he waded in and defended me until my attackers ran away.

Full story at this link…

John Prescott takes on the Sun: ‘I’ve always hated the Sun and Murdoch’

John Prescott pulls no punches in his reaction to recent set-tos between the Sun, News International executives and the press pack. He writes:

I’ve always hated the Sun and Murdoch. I was never happy with their endorsement of Blair (NEVER Labour, always Blair.)

But last week they blatantly LIED about my campaign. And today I’ll expose it.

Before this came a quote now bordering on infamy – the Sun’s political editor Tom Newton Dunn is reported to have recently told other journalists: “It is my job to see that Cameron fucking well gets into Downing Street.” This was followed by Rebekah Brooks and James Murdoch’s unexpected “visit” to the Independent’s offices – Murdoch decided “to stamp his little feet and go nasty”, writes Prescott.

But a story headlined ‘No Prez-ence’, which suggested no one turned up to hear Prescott speak at a visit to Southampton, appears to be the straw that’s broken the camel’s back. Prescott says he is now going to expand his campaigning for Labour to ensure it’s the Sun and Murdoch’s Son “wot lost it” on 7 May, he says.

Full post at this link…

Guardian asks readers who it should back for the UK election

The Guardian is using Comment is Free to ask its readers which political party the paper should back in its election editorial. Comments have to be submitted before 1pm today.

Beyond this, however, there’s a great table showing UK national newspapers’ support for different parties since 1945 – the data can be sorted by individual title, year and election winner:


Will the leader’s election debates engage first time voters?

Elizabeth Davies is a freelance journalist and recent graduate of Emmanuel College, Cambridge. She reviews the first of the Leaders’ Debates and asks: can the format engage young, first time voters? This post is also featured on her blog.

The BBC grandiosely declared Thursday 15 May to be “the day the skies went quiet”. It was not, unfortunately, because the entire population was glued to ITV’s broadcast of the first of the Leaders’ Debates. It was because a great plume of plane-endangering volcanic ash was infiltrating our airspace, just at a time when news organisations were doing their best to provide audiences with nothing but wall-to-wall debate ‘preview’ pieces.

I was not glued to my television, but only because I don’t have one. Like a significant fraction of the population – a fraction dominated by young first-time voters like myself – I chose to watch the debate online. Unfortunately the quality of ITV’s live stream made it difficult to remain captivated for long. It’s one thing to engage with social media to encourage meaningful online discussion, but quite another to slap so many cursory widgets on the page that no-one is able to load anything.

I’m not a great case study for a first-time voter, merely because I am such a political geek that I watched all of the US presidential primary debates live online back in those days before anyone had heard of Sarah Palin. That does, however, make me something of an expert in pre-election debates.

Last month, following BBC Three’s First Time Voters’ Question Time, I suggested that the Leaders’ Debates were the kind of media spectacle needed to engage young voters in the political process. On that front, ITV failed spectacularly.

Alastair Stewart was a poor choice of moderator, too little known among the country’s young voters to really fire them up. The studio, along with David Cameron, looked like it would drag us back to the 1980s, and the directing suggested one of the cameramen was frequently having a kind of spasm.

Those visual things matter, superficial as they are, because they make the difference in the split second that someone decides to check out what’s happening rather than flicking over to a Friends re-run. That difference is particularly pronounced when you’re trying to engage those who’ve never had the opportunity to vote before; those who are registered in record low numbers and who might proudly attest to not being interested in politics because it’s boring.

Aside from the lack of glamour, the format was a failure. The questions selected for the debate were insipid, formulaic and, frankly, boring. David Cameron told ITN that he worried the debates would be “slow and sluggish”. Never one to fail to deliver on a promise, Cameron himself ensured the debate was both slow and sluggish by displaying almost no personality whatsoever. Gordon Brown performed much better than I expected, but Ipsos Mori’s ‘worm’ showed dial groups just don’t warm to what he’s saying.

It was Nick Clegg’s debate, and the snap polls seem to back that up. He came across largely as a normal human being – impassioned, but not in a fake politician-type way, and as someone whose own frustrations with the current political situation reflected those of the electorate. It is plausible that a significant number of voters who claimed previously to be “undecided” will now be telling the pollsters they’re climbing into the Lib Dem camp. But if the remaining debates are similar to the first, how many of those will be 18 to 25 year olds?

Jonathan Rayner: ‘Time to put some balance back into journalism’

The Law Gazette’s Jonathan Rayner attacks newspapers’ lack of balance, in the run-up to the election. Of both national and regional journalists, he asks: “When did reporters stop reporting the news and become political propagandists instead?”

What is the journalist’s job? Is it still finding out and reporting what’s going on, because how else will everyone know? Or is it convincing the readers, because of their proprietors’ commercial or political interests, to vote in a certain way?

Full post at this link…

Media Guardian: Regional news consortia will miss election contract deadline

Attempts to rush through plans for Independently Funded News Consortia (IFNC) to replace regional news provision by ITV ahead of the general election on 6 May have failed.

The winning bids for the IFNC pilots in Tyne Tees/Border region, Scotland and Wales were announced on 25 March, but contracts for the scheme will not be signed before the election date, a spokeswoman for the Department for Culture, Media and Sport confirmed to the Guardian.

Those involved will now have to hope for a Labour victory on polling day as the Conservative party has said it will scrap the IFNC plans.

Full post at this link…

Questioning Question Time – how can the media engage young voters?

Following on from Journalism.co.uk’s coverage of the City University London event on the role of new media in the forthcoming UK election, Elizabeth Davies reviews BBC3’s special Question Time programme for young voters and asks: what can the media, both old and new, do to engage young voters? This post is also featured on her blog.

My name’s Elizabeth, and when this General Election eventually rolls around, I will be a first-time voter. I’m able to say this as if I’m a member of a support group because, quite frankly, I am. The Electoral Commission warned on Wednesday that more than half of 17-25-year-olds are not on the electoral register, paving the way for us to be considered a demographic desperately in need of some political prodding.

Of course, one way to do this is through sensible use of the media. Young voters need to be persuaded to shake off their political torpor, let alone demonstrate some enthusiasm, in a way that neither patronises nor pigeonholes them. As a journalist and young voter myself, I was intrigued to see how BBC3’s First Time Voters’ Question Time aired last night would tackle the issue.

The first depressing sign of what was to follow was the fact that the programme aired at the same time as the England vs Egypt match on ITV1. It doesn’t take a political genius to figure out that such a programming conflict means you’re probably preaching to the converted. A quick glance at the audience confirmed that. The vast majority, if not all, will probably turn up at their polling stations the minute they open.

The three parties selected their youngest and most telegenic representatives – which they considered in this case to be David Lammy, Jeremy Hunt and Julia Goldsworthy – while BBC3 stuck them on a panel with three others who they thought might be able to engage with the “youth”: Rory Bremner, Tim-from-the-first-series-of-the-Apprentice and… Jamelia. I wasn’t the only Twitter user who wondered if she’d wandered on to the wrong programme.

Over the course of an hour the audience managed to whine about politicians’ failure to talk about important policies and then illustrate, with the help of BBC3’s question selector, that what they cared about politically was failing to land a high-paying job the minute they graduated, celebrities, and indie music. Perhaps I’m being too harsh. Occasionally panellists and audience members did edge towards something resembling real political debate. But, as a rule, this special version of Question Time managed to both patronise and pigeonhole those of us who grew up under New Labour. That’s some feat.

Perhaps you have to give BBC3 points for trying – but those points don’t really count for very much when they’re unlikely to spur even one of those young people into making sure they’re registered to vote. As an attempt, it was pretty feeble. Nick Robinson may consider social media “self-important and narcissistic tosh”, but as we all know, 17-25 years are narcissistic and self-important. Yes, we got a Twitter account whose name was occasionally flashed up on screen, but what about a hashtag so we could debate these issues? What about the Twitter names of the panellists so the conversation could be taken wider than the studio? What about some kind of attempt to engage with Facebook given that we are, supposedly, the “Facebook generation”? What about – God forbid – an actual webpage for the programme where specific information about party policies can be posted and discussed?

Time and time again Barack Obama was held up as a shining example of a politician who got the youth excited because he talked about the issues and also let his true personality shine through in a way untainted by spin or the media. This demonstrated successfully that it isn’t only young people, but the programme’s panellists, who fail to read the news properly. Gordon Brown and David Cameron will take to the podium for the much-vaunted leaders’ debates schooled in the finest of the Obama arts, from those who know them best – Obama’s own advisers.

In the end, it may be up to those leaders’ debates and the media discussion around them to push voters of all ages towards showing an interest in the political future of their country. Yes, I do worry about the “Americanisation” of British politics the leaders’ debates and the subsequent exertions of party spin machines could create. But it may take that kind of wall-to-wall exposure to grab people’s attentions. In the final five minutes of the show, one of the audience members made the only sensible comment of the entire hour: you can complain all you want about politicians failing to lay out their policies, but young people need to show some initiative and actually go out to look for them. Journalists have a responsibility to be the vessel for that search, and to make it far more than a token gesture.

Young voters should not march themselves down to a polling station purely for the sake of it. But if the media considers carefully how it can grab their attention in an adult and informed manner, then it will do them, and the country, a huge service. And, you never know – it might just win itself a vital generation of new followers at the same time.

Frontline Club debate: social media is important, but not a kingmaker yet

MPs, Westminster hacks and activists might be addicted to expressing themselves in 140 characters or less, but don’t expect this year’s general election to be decided on which party has the best social media strategy.

Then again, politicians and the media shouldn’t dismiss voters’ digital engagement, according to a panel at a Frontline Club debate on the importance on social media for the upcoming election.

You can watch a video of the whole thing here

Twitter certainly has the  potential to land politicians in mini-media storms; the panellists agreed: if David Wright MP had merely told a reporter verbally that Conservatives are “scum” it’s unlikely to have got much coverage, such is the continued novelty of Twitter to many news editors.

Paul Staines, better known as mischievous Westminster blogger Guido Fawkes, argued that no matter how well connected parties are, with Labour, Conservatives and Lib Dems towing similar centerist policy lines there was little to differentiate them for the ordinary voter: “If they are all marching in the centre ground, there’s not much to market, is there?”

And as for reporters, they’re “not going to get a scoop from Tweetdeck”, he warned. “There are about 500 of us (in the Westminster village) listening to each other aren’t there?”

Channel 4 News presenter Krishnan Guru-Murthy said social media buzz doesn’t determine what C4 leads its 7pm bulletin with – but Twitter got the network’s reporters in touch with someone in the audience at Nick Griffin’s notorious Question Time performance.

But all this is missing the point, according to Chris Condron, Press Association’s head of digital strategy:

If you ask any journalist what they think about a phenomenon like Twitter (…) they tend to think about what it means for journalists, but where its potential really lies is for audiences.

The “disintermediation” of news – where readers can go straight to the source of news, such as an MP’s Twitter stream – was a challenge for the media, but Condron is confident that “the reporters’ gathering and filtering of raw news was still essential.”

More events coming up at the Frontline Club:

  • Reflections with Richard Sambrook – a one-to-one conversation with the BBC’s outgoing director of global news. He’s headed for a new role as vice-president of PR firm Edelman, but how does he look back on a rich career and what is his view of journalism today?
  • Iraq: The Media Inquiry – a special panel discussion to examine the media’s reporting of Iraq since the invasion in 2003. With Nick Davies, author of Flat Earth News; Patrick Cockburn, The Independent’s Middle East correspondent and journalist David Rose. Moderated by Paddy O’Connell, presenter of BBC Radio 4’s Broadcasting House.
  • Insight with Timothy Garton Ash – the columnist and Oxford professor will be in conversation with Channel 4 News anchor Jon Snow will be in conversation with Channel 4 News presenter Jon Snow. Garton Ash will be talking about his career, the transformation of Europe over the last thirty years and what Barack Obama will mean for the United States and the world.
  • On the Media: Is the age of celebrity-obsessed media coming to an end? We discuss whether the ubiquitous presence of pseudo-famous faces on newspapers and news bulletins is here to stay. With comedian and journalist Jane Bussman; Popbitch founder Camilla Wright; Heat magazine editor and broadcaster Sam Delaney. Chaired by Robin Morgan, former editor of the Sunday Times magazine. This event is in association with the BBC College of Journalism.
  • This post also appears at the Frontline Club’s Forum blog.