Reporting Elections

In our most recent law lecture we took the time to look at reporting elections, not always necessarily a story in itself but we're performing a public duty as the press in reporting on them. Who guards the guardians? We do. The profession of journalism has often been referred to as 'The Fourth Estate'. This really means that we're here to make sure those who are meant to be in charge and who are meant to be looking after us and our interests really are doing that. Arguably that raises the question of who do we report to, who watches the watchmen? I think that is an especially interesting point with the shadow of Leveson looming large with his report due this coming week.

During elections the issue of impartiality is very important; the difference between comment and straight reporting must be crystal clear. This is really a guideline for broadcast journalism though. The BBC and the like have to give the same amount of time or thereabouts to each political party in the running, in fact during the lecture it was pointed out to us by Ian who is a BBC man that they will have a record of which parties have been on what channels and for how long. This isn't the same for newspapers though who have the freedom to be completely biased in their reporting. The Sun shows us how important newspaper support can be in elections as it flip-flops from Conservative to Labour and now back again. The most famous example was its denouncement of Neil Kinnock in this famous front page. They even gave themselves a pat on the back after the Tories were voted in that year, saying "It's the Sun wot won it." Grammatically incorrect? Definitely. Factually correct? Possibly. There will often be editorial choices in broadcast media on who gets the main focus; in fact in the packages we watched about Corby not all parties got soundbites, just the main parties. But if you don't balance things and campaigns start to turn sour then who will the parties go for? Well it would be us journos. At election time there is fantastic scrutiny on us as journalists but we also wield great power.

The hard truths about reporting during elections are as follows. Citizens will base their voting choices on your reporting; it's a simple fact but important to remember since your words can change elections, bring down politicians, end governments. Accuracy and impartiality are even more important than usual during elections, they are totally and utterly vital because making a factual error at a time so sensitive could change the course of a campaign and would almost certainly end your career. Something like that would not be good at any time but during elections everything is a little bit more on edge. Another hard truth is that politicians love to shoot the messenger; I shouldn't need to explain this really but politicians need us like a hole in the head but if they can use us to their advantage they will. Going after journos seems pretty popular at the moment and would be even more so if it was election time. The final thing to remember is that campaign language can often become rather 'heated' as it were so there might be some untruths in what politicians will be saying. I don't mean that they'll just be going round lying but it would be a good idea to check what the facts are on what politicians say about their opponents before reporting it and getting in trouble ourselves. That's one of the danger areas of reporting on elections; if we were to report others statements for example we could get in to a lot of trouble, one case that came up in the lecture was that of Phil Woolas, the former Labour MP who ran this campaign against his Lib Dem rival. Reporting that as fact would have got us journalists into a lot of trouble; about as much trouble as Phil Woolas got himself in and you can read more about that in this article here.

An odd thing that I didn't know anything about before the lecture was that journalists can't report on opinion polls or exit polls once the election is underway. Now I know this it seems pretty obvious to me that it would be bad. I mean think of the consequences of reporting that Labour are currently ahead based on exit polls on the day of a general election. Would this make people who would normally vote Labour less likely to go out and vote, thinking they already had the victory sewn up? Or would it influence Tory voters or Lib Dem voters to get out and vote when they weren't sure whether to vote before, swinging the election their way. How reliable can these polls be anyway? You might find yourself reporting all sorts of things that have no real basis in fact.

All of this came to a head for me really with WINOL's work on the HPCC debate we put on. For those of you that aren't aware, my course hosted a debate with all six candidates for the position of Hampshire Police and Crime Commissioner, a post that was new and was being covered in lots of places where other elections were also taking place. In the build up our political editor, as I'm sure he likes to be known, was running profiles on each candidate, building up balance over time as he wasn't afforded the time to have what would have been something like a two and a half minute package which would not fit in a standard WINOL bulletin. He had to be very careful about how much time was afforded to each candidate as he would be the one blamed if the campaign turned sour (see above). You can see all of our coverage of the HPCC elections around and about on the WINOL website here.

Until Next Time. Stay Classy Internet.