is an interesting article in Saturday’s Times, about the conflict of interest for the BBC created by the Labour Party’s unsubtle scheduling of the Hartlepool by-election for the last day of their annual conference in Brighton:
Senior corporation figures had offered to balance coverage of the last day of Labours conference – the day of the poll – after the Tories complained, The Times understands.
But Liam Fox, the Tory co-chairman, rejected the deal and called instead for equal airtime for main opposition parties throughout both weeks of the Labour and Liberal Democrat conferences.
Dr Fox first wrote to the BBC this week, arguing that, under election legislation, broadcasters must devote the same time to the main parties in the run-up to a ballot.
He acknowledged that it was not a problem of the BBC’s making and is furious that Labour called the byelection for the last day of its conference – guaranteed to provide four days of solid media coverage of the party’s policies. The Tory conference is the following week.
As Michael Howard made his first visit to Hartlepool yesterday, Dr Fox released a letter thanking the BBC for some of its suggestions but calling for more concessions.
He wrote: “On the issue of live coverage of the conferences themselves, it is unacceptable that you do not plan any measures to build in comment by the other parties. There is thus no opportunity for those parties to offer their rightful response. It is essential that, throughout the Liberal Democrat and Labour Party conferences, there is balancing comment from the other main parties contesting Hartlepool.” Dr Fox called for an immediate response.
It will be interesting to see how this one pans out. Personally I think, in this instance, that the BBC should comply rigidly with the electoral law about equal airtime – it might teach the Labour Party not to be so transparently anti-democratic in future, given that the date of the by-election (and the cause of it, for that matter), were entirely within their control.
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OFF TOPIC radio 4’s PM has just broken the Rathergate story. The angle? “Poor Dan Rather he’s right to say that too much has been said about the fake documents and not enough about their ‘significance'”Oh, and “aren’t right wing Republicans really stupid and paranoid when they suggest that the media has a liberal bias.” I am sure this will astonish you all.
Given that way fewer than 1/500 of the British population are voters in Hartlepool, the Tories stand genuinely no chance whatsoever of winning there, and we’re approaching another general election campaign, it would seem unreasonable to plug the Tories in the week before their conference to the whole nation to the same extent as Labour and the Lib Dems in their conference weeks (particularly unfair on the Lib Dems, whose fault the whole thing isn’t).
Perhaps the fairest thing would be for the BBC to give the Tories detailed coverage in the week before Hartlepool, and then not cover their conference…
La M: Nothing on Pravda-on-the-Thames Online regarding CBS’s admission that the Bush memo documents are fake.
But a huge, prominently posted feature on Kerry’s complaints that the Iraq war was a “mistake.”
Marquise:
I don’t know if the story you heard was the same one I heard on the WS’s “Newshour” on Sunday, but in that one, a journalism professor from Columbia University here in the US had basically the same tone you describe, and when the presenter asked him to compart the Rather memo affair with Andrew Gilligan, the professor referred to Andrew Gilligan’s case as something along the lines of a single word misspoken in a live broadcast; (sorry, I don’t have the exact quote) the tone was that Rathergate was similarly as minor as the Gilligan affair.
Even if you believe those comments about Gilligan, what Rather and Co. did was much more serious.
It was certainly a pretty cynical act by the Labour party for which they deserve to be punished. Perhaps everyone should vote for H’Angus the Monkey again.
The answer is to follow each speech at every conference with similar length comment from the other main parties. Would make the whole bullsh*t season more interesting and keep everyone on their toes.
Incidentally, do any other closet Capital FM listeners feel a smirk coming on when strident Tory policy is issued by ‘Dr Fox’. Kind of ruins any sense of gravitas he might otherwise manage to impart.
The answer is to follow each speech at every conference with similar length comment from the other main parties. Would make the whole bullsh*t season more interesting and keep everyone on their toes.
Now that’s an *excellent* plan.