News coverage
Having returned from a short post-election camping trip I’ve been catching up on the news. I’ve been rather struck by the slants on local election coverage in our local papers.
From stories in the MEN:
In Salford the Lib Dems aimed to take two seats and defend two against Labour. Labour had set Claremont as their top target and poured money and effort into it; bussing in activists from around the region and involving the resources of the MP’s office. We took our two targets and held comfortably.
The Conservatives targeted five seats and gained three – the had little to defend and were incredibly disappointed to miss out on Kersal, which proved much less close than last year’s election (mainly down to Peter Connor’s personal vote and links with the Jewish community).
So, we gain two seats (total now ten) and the Tories gain three (total now thirteen) – how does that translate into major gains for the Tories and a failure to make significant inroads for us?
The MEN’s David Ottewell wrote both the stories that I drew the two quotes from – it’s hard not to see a definite slant in his election coverage.
5:40 pm on May 5th, 2008
I’m sorry Steve, but the Liberal Democrats only have themselves to blame for coverage like this.
For years your party have been feeding the press the same tedious line about “only the Liberal Democrats are the real opposition to Labour in the urban north” – in fact Nick Clegg tried on the same line on Friday morning (belittling your efforts in Salford in the process, in fact).
The results this week have proved beyond doubt this week that this Lib/Lab line is a load of old cobblers, but after peddling it for so long you can’t really complain when the subsequent media coverage comes back to bite you on the backside. Without the spin from your party (and Labour) perhaps we wouldn’t see the coverage you are complaining so bitterly about.
Here in Salford we made three gains, we have 13 Councillors and our share of the vote is neck-and-neck with Labour across the whole City – and yet your spinners have been telling David Ottewell and his colleagues that Conservatives can’t win in northern Cities!
In any case, we can all pick apart media coverage. The Channel M on Salford didn’t mention the Conservatives at all. David Ottewell’s article that you linked to portrays our results in Bolton as disappointing, when actually they represented good progress in a year where we were defending seats in three wards where Labour had won in 2006 and 2007. Looking at the media coverage on the whole though, I think it has been reasonably fair – although of course the Advertiser coverage is yet to come.
Incidentally, for the record, our target for these elections was three gains – which we achieved. Our vote rose in every single ward and the vote shares across the City are remarkable and bode very well for the next set of local elections and the General Election. You had a good night on Thursday Steve, but ours was better.
6:30 pm on May 5th, 2008
Well the last of your sentences was true at least.
7:37 pm on May 5th, 2008
Any thoughts on the Community Action Party anyone? I suspect it’ll prove to be a ‘one hit wonder’ in Salford and I can’t say I’m impressed by what I’ve seen and heard of it. It served nicely as a protest vote against congestion charging but that anti-Roger Jones card can of course only be played once and I can’t see the CAP making any great contribution to local politics in the Salford council chamber.
7:45 pm on May 5th, 2008
Well, if their actions in Wigan are anything to go by, they’ll make a lot of noise for a bit and then people will see straight through them.
The Salford campaign was I believe masterminded by Wigan Cllr Ed Houlton, a relative of the new Cllr Rick Houlton. While Ed was shepherding CAP to victory in Irlam, his ward colleague in Lowton East was defeated by the Conservative candidate by over 1000 votes and with a swing that made the Irlam result pale by comparison…
11:31 pm on May 6th, 2008
Gah! I can’t win.
Last year Iain got incredibly upset because I said the Tories had failed to make a significant breakthrough in Greater Manchester, given the results across the country as a whole.
That was true.
This year I said the Lib Dems didn’t make “significant inroads” in GM.
That’s also true.
We can quibble about the results in Salford – where the Tories gained a seat more, and in terms of vote share pushed the Lib Dems into a clear third place – and whether they represented “significant inroads”. I’d argue they don’t, really, given that one might expect the “middle” party to profit most from Labour’s woes.
Moreover across GM as a whole there can be little doubt who were the big winners of the night.
I called it as I saw it this year. I did the same last year. And, quite frankly, I’ll do the same damn thing in 2010. If Lib Dems think I’m a Tory, and Tories think I’m Labour, and Labour think I’m a Liberal Democrat, I’m probably doing something right.
All the best,
D
7:11 am on May 7th, 2008
Nope – there’s no way a journalist can win!
I wasn’t accusing you of any political bias – but I do think journalist often write the story before it’s happened, and I do feel that what you wrote was slightly sloppy. Hey – that’s my opinion; I don’t expect to be happy with every story I read, and I don’t expect journalists to get it right all the time – this time I think you over-egged the Tory pudding a tad.
10:18 am on May 9th, 2008
Just read the Advertiser coverage, which treats the Conservative performance (three gains, level share of the vote with Labour) as an afterthought. Swings and roundabouts…
12:27 pm on May 9th, 2008
The Advertiser (and the MEN Group behind it) will continue to ‘tacitly’ support – or at least be most sympathetic to – the Labour Party for as long as it is still firmly in control. This approach is filed under: “Editorial Policy: subsection ‘Pragmatism’: Knowing which side your bread’s buttered on.”
If for sake of argument the nature of the council suddenly changed and it became Tory dominated watch the Advertiser whip on its true blue undies in an instant and toss its frayed, manky red boxers out with the potato peel and last week’s news.