At approximately 5 o’clock in the morning the day after the general election.
Reporter “So how many Labour seats do we have?”
Me “Three Labour, three Lib dem and one Green at the moment. The rest are all Conservative.”
Long pause
Reporter “No really what are the figures?”
Me” Really! Those are the figures, we are just waiting for two more seats to come in and they are not due till after midday!”
Reporter “wow”
For regular readers to this blog I am sorry for not posting more frequently, but as you are probably aware there has been a general election going on!
As a broadcaster I have an obligation to be impartial on all things political, and although blogs are supposed to be about opinions I was so overwhelmed with all the recent media madness that I haven’t had time to blog.
BJTC Placements
For the past month I have simultaneously been revising for exams, preparing my final portfolio and working for the BBC and ITV.
While at BBC South Today I had two packages make to air and provided pictures/ interviews for every day of my placement. At ITV Wales I took on more of a behind the scenes role helping with planning, the ITV Welsh Leaders Debate and their political programme the Sharp End.
My General Election
For the election night I was working back down in Southampton, starting at 11:00 at night and finishing about 10:00 the next day. My role was to run around the newsroom updating the graphics team on the results of more than 50 constituencies across the South. Along with another elections helper, I updated the constituency board and passed on information from the News Org to Online and other reporters on the ground. Oh and check out Peter Henley’s blog for a funny photo of Jeremy Vines Election night, and a breakdown of all the constituencies I was monitoring.
It was a really exciting night to be working in media, although at 4 in the morning it’s hard to drum up lots of enthusiasm. Still I was really glad to be working because it has meant that I can say I followed the polls through the night into a hung parliament. It was also the night that TV really showed how powerful a force it now is in British Democracy. Rory Cellen Jones says that this has not been an online election, it has been a TV election and I think he is right. I doubt anyone would have told you this time last year that the Liberal Democrats would be talking to the Conservatives about forming a government, something which really came about because of the leadership debates.
Although Facebook and Twitter did play a key role in engaging with younger voters it was the leaders debates which really galvanised the campaigns. I have always been interested in politics but I have never been able to discuss it with 95% of my friends without them falling asleep! On all three leaders debate nights I had friends I had known for years texting me or IMing me about the parties policies, the scariness of Gordon Browns smile or Cameron’s possible Botox.
So what next?
Like the rest of the world I honestly have no idea, but what I do know is that most journalists I speak to would not want another general election in a few months time. The election is great for TV but it also takes over news agendas, dominating headlines and limiting broadcasters. Any story we want to cover has to be rigorously checked for any political slant, and the need to show all candidates/ possible party slogans eats up time in short packages.
The party political broadcasts also eat into local news bulletins, causing audiences to switch off and limiting the creativity of news rooms which suddenly find they only have 20 minutes to fit in local news stories, of which 10 minutes is taken by election material.
To be clear this is no criticism of any of the newsrooms I have been in, but ultimately another general election in a few months is not an exciting prospect for most to the journalists I know. However a hung parliament is a juicy news agenda. TV has awakened a new interest in politics over the past 6 weeks, the key in my view is to maintain that interest, while not being dominated by it. How that happens, I just don’t know?
