The BBC election results coverage
Written by Mark Pack on 2nd May 2008 – 2:50 amEr, it’s not exactly good is it? Having a graph that has 25% lower than 23% isn’t the most helpful of graphs. I’m not sure that “American” accent was a great idea either. But really … compared with the results available from numerous places on the internet, was the BBC coverage up to the standards you would expect of an organisation with so many resources to deploy to cover an event?
Posted in News
2nd May 2008 at 3:43 am
Just because I don’t often post in 100% agrement with you the answer to your question is “No ! “
2nd May 2008 at 8:29 am
You asked the question, “Compared with the results available from numerous places on the internet, was the BBC coverage up to the standards you would expect of an organisation with so many resources to deploy to cover an event?”
The answer has to be a resounding NO.
Imagine the outcry if the BBC’s coverage of a sporting event was trivialised in this way.
2nd May 2008 at 9:20 am
Afraid I missed the BBC TV coverage, though doesn’t sound like I missed much.
But I was tuned to BBC Radio 5 Live, which was utterly dreadful. Richard Bacon in a ‘zoo’ format with no insight or analysis worth listening to (exceptions: Matthew Parris and the BBC’s Ross Hawkins, both excellent).
When it comes to election coverage the BBC is still firmly rooted in the 1970s. Pathetic.
2nd May 2008 at 9:27 am
I suspect the BBC had the graphs and story of a poor Lib Dem performance ready; when we did better than their plan they just carried on regadless. How on Earth can beating the party of government be bad news.
2nd May 2008 at 9:38 am
By “American” accent, do you mean the Canadian-born Professor of Government (at Essex) and noted psephologist, Anthony King? He’s pretty much a fixture of BBC election night coverage, and one of the best bit, IMO. I could have done without Jeremy Vine’s comedy graphics, however.
2nd May 2008 at 9:40 am
This is the nature of having a nationalised television (& radio & internet) channel dominating the media - ie. whereas in any other field we’d just switch to something else, with the media we have to moan - to absolutely no effect.
2nd May 2008 at 9:41 am
Jono - no, I suspect that was a reference to Jeremy Vine’s accent when he dressed up as a cowboy.
2nd May 2008 at 9:50 am
Ah, Ok. Happily, I switched off just as that was beginning - I couldn’t really work up the enthusiasm, being as none of the results were going to be for my area and so were not really going to affect me. (I was also getting annoyed by the number of people who were declaring London for Boris, despite not a single vote having been counted.)
2nd May 2008 at 9:57 am
Jono: that’s right - more Anthony King and less of the computer graphics of an American wild west venue featuring Jeremy Vine would certainly have been a better choice by the BBC!
2nd May 2008 at 10:17 am
“Having a graph that has 25% lower than 23% isn’t the most helpful of graphs.”
I think that was because they made allowance for the Lib Dems normally performing better in local elections than in general elections.
But if you’re trying to convey subtleties like that, it’s ridiculous to try to do it with cartoonesque computer graphics. If they wanted comic relief, they should have got Jon Culshaw to do it.
Chris Phillips
2nd May 2008 at 10:20 am
King was good, and so was Nick Robinson. The rest was poor. We do deserve better, and all three political parties, along with people like Mike Smithson, should get together, and come up with a sense of what we want. Stalin to Mr Bean was a great one-liner for PMQs, but it was not suitable for the BBC. Ditto the 30% Clegg.
2nd May 2008 at 10:27 am
I have to disagree about King…totally…he so obviously has Conservative sympathies…Nick Robinson was good though.
2nd May 2008 at 11:51 am
Chris: I think you’re being too kind to the BBC
It was a messed up graph - they simply put the blobs in the wrong place as far as I can see.
2nd May 2008 at 1:26 pm
I watched the overnight BBC1 election special throughout until the bitter end. It was a mixed bag.
Nick Robinson and Anthony King were good. The guest MPs in the studio were generally more reasonable and less shouty than is usually the case.
The Emily Maitlis pieces from City Hall were unfocused, rather like the thing she did live from a pub last year, and her interviews added little to the sum total of human wisdom. Her interview with Jon Culshaw was pointless - his only value would have been to do some impressions, but instead all we got were his rambling opinions, which were of no consequence.
Meanwhile, the innovation of the three party bloggers (also based in City Hall) was underexploited. It was basically a nice idea, but would have been better if the bloggers had been able to feed in more news from their own sources. The producers, having invited the bloggers in, were obviously unsure what to do with them.
The regional news reporters who occasionally came in live from a count in a sports hall somewhere were mostly out of their depth and seemed unable to offer any insight.
Now let us consider Jeremy Vine. I had assumed that Vine’s role was to replace that of Peter Snow, but last night’s performance with the computer graphics was embarrassing. In particular, the three animations (the ‘ascent of man’ for the Tories, ‘Stalin to Mr Bean’ for Labour and the cowboy saloon for the Lib Dems) were patronising and witless.
The producers who thought up this wheeze obviously don’t realise that the only people who stay up through the night watching election results are a hard core audience of intelligent and politically literate people, if not political geeks. This sort of dumbing down is the kind of thing one expects to see as part of the tabloid values of BBC1’s 6pm news, but not as part of an election night special.
I disagree with Julian H’s earlier post, which puts this down to “nationalised” media. Sky and ITN are capable of offering an alternative, aren’t they?
The source of the problem is different. It is the BBC’s PC obsession with ‘accessibility’; a fear that an intelligent and literate programme might be condemned as ‘elitist’. In this instance, it was a gross misjudgement. Viewers of election night specials are the same sort of people who watch Newsnight and no amount of rank populism will attract a mass audience.
2nd May 2008 at 1:56 pm
I’m watching the BBC News Channel (nee BBC News 24) and have just been told that the number of councils we control has fallen to six… whilst at the same moment the BBC News website says we control 11, up one.
And on this whole BBC coverage issue, how is a LibDem result of 25% (well up on our poll rating) a bad result for us, but 44% for the Tories (in line with some poll ratings for them) a fantastic result?
Why must we pay a poll tax for such a biased service?
2nd May 2008 at 2:58 pm
http://www.bbc.co.uk/complaints
=)
2nd May 2008 at 3:55 pm
Educate, inform and entertain?
Banal conventional wisdom given a platform, more like.
While personality becomes ever more important to the editors their arguments and public reception suffer as a consequence.
Auntie can’t perform properly while she continues to run scared of her financial masters.
2nd May 2008 at 4:17 pm
The BBC’s James Landale: the Tories have won councils they have never controlled before, like Bury.
Err, I just checked the BBC’s website, and discovered that the Tories controlled Bury council following local elections in 1975, 1976, 1978, 1979, 1980, 1982, 1983, and 1984.
2nd May 2008 at 4:44 pm
LibDems gain 6 seats to win Sheffield - is the BBC telling you that? - whereas the Tories gained 3 seats (half as many as the LibDem success in Sheffield) to win Bury - and does the BBC ever tire of telling you that?
Does the BBC only use briefings produced by CCHQ?
2nd May 2008 at 4:58 pm
BBC - is their shoddy reporting and election programming due to incompetence, arrogance or ignorance. And what can we do apart from look away?
3rd May 2008 at 12:56 am
the ‘coverage’ had me cringing a times last night, mostly when Jeremy Vine was wasting time with the computer graphics. Infantile, amateurish and embarrassing.
3rd May 2008 at 1:17 am
So are you pleased with your 10% in the London elections? Does that still make you the “second party”?