Party members who come to the Lib Dem conference frequently note the disparity between what’s actually happening, and the way in which it is distorted reported by the press (whether through ignorance, prejudice, laziness or carelessness is for you to judge according to your generosity of spirit). So welcome to LDV’s Media Moron Watch, in which we highlight for you some of the most choice examples of the media willfully misrepresenting what’s going on at Bournemouth 2008.
First up (simply because I read it first) is today’s Independent on Sunday, which captions a picture of Chris Huhne with:
Chris Huhne: casts a shadow over Nick Clegg’s conference
What prompted this apocalyptic view? Had Chris gone on the record to slag off Nick, declaring his intention to challenge him for the party leadership? No, of course not. Chris had been guilty simply of stating the obvious:
Mr Huhne also told the IoS that Mr Clegg would not become a household name until after the next election, saying the leader needed to “go through an election to become a real figure in the front rooms of the country”.
Like every other Lib Dem leader in history, then.
If you have nominations for LDV’s Media Moron Watch, highlight them in the comments, or email us at [email protected].
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4 Comments
I’d nominate a Big Issue interview with David Steel.
The interviewer claimed that: “The Lib Dems have arrived in Bournemouth in subdued spirits” which was a remarkable bit of Mystic Meg-ing since I bought this Big Issue last Monday 8th & presumably it was printed days before that.
The Daily Mail quotes some of this interview, and gives the impression that Steel is pretty unflattering about Clegg:
And when Lord Steel, who led the old Liberal Party from 1976 until the formation of the Lib Dems in 1988, was asked by an interviewer how Mr Clegg was shaping up, he could only insist that it was ‘much too early to say, but I wish him luck’.
The peer added that Mr Clegg, a father of two young children with another on the way, was struggling to combine family life with his new party leadership job.
‘I know that Nick, who’s got a young family, is finding the demands on his time greater than he anticipated,’ he told the Big Issue magazine.
Has some positive stuff about Clegg been omitted by the Mail, or wasn’t there any to omit?
I haven’t attended Conference for more than 20 years and remember thinking that I wasn’t at the same conference as the media.
One thing that also hasn’t changed – but was very noticeable on BBC Parliament yesterday and this morning – was the almost empty hall.
Can I nominate Brendan Carlin and Glen Owen [so much nonsense, it took two of them to write it !] in the Mail on Sunday who claim that Clegg & Conference have been “rocked” by a defection.
Or, to put it more accurately, the fact that Mark Godwin has joined the Tories.
Mark who? Mark Godwin, who left the Lib Dems in May when he wasn’t selected for the Crewe & Nantwich byelection.
So not an MP … not a Group Leader … not even a Councillor.
Somehow, I doubt that news is going to rock Nick or Conference for long – or at all!
Indeed, a “defection” of such significance that, as far as I can see, it’s not even mentioned on Conservative Home.