Month: October 2014

Lessons In Journalism, Populism And Diversity At ITN London

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ITN CDN Open Day semipartisansam 004

 

I walked through a doorway, found myself standing in the ITV National News studio, and for a moment I was shocked to realise that I didn’t recognise the space at all.

Not because of the floor-to-ceiling green screen backdrop and the absence of the computer-generated background – the final version, familiar to viewers, was displayed on a monitor to the side – but because I hadn’t deliberately or consciously watched the ITV News in more than a decade. The news desk, the set, the logo – nothing seemed familiar or evoked the old ITV I remembered from the late 1990s.

I’m a voracious reader and consumer of domestic and international news. In fact, I’m currently embarking on a side career in political journalism. And yet I had somehow become untuned from one of Britain’s main news outlets. Should that be cause for concern?

The reason I was deep inside ITN’s London newsroom at all is thanks to an invitation to attend the Creative Diversity Network open day, one of many similar events being held around the country where major broadcasters (Sky, BBC, CNN, ITN and others) open their doors to give people from ethnic and socially diverse backgrounds the taste of a career in TV journalism. My invitation came through Poached Creative, the social enterprise with whom I trained earlier this year.

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The Establishment Are Still No Closer To Understanding UKIP Voters

Samuel Hooper2 Comments

 

What does a political party have to do to get some respect in Westminster?

On Monday, UKIP’s first Member of Parliament took his seat in the House of Commons.

The party of gadflies, cranks, loonies, fruitcakes, closet racists and loons had just equalled the Green Party in finally securing representation in the Commons, with every chance of doubling the Greens’ achievement if Mark Reckless wins his by-election in Rochester and Strood, and joins Douglas Carswell MP  in the UKIP caucus.

But two Conservative defections and worrying polling data indicating Labour’s vulnerability to the UKIP insurgency still have not resulted in any real change in tone or policy from either of the main political parties – though, in their most generous concession so far, some of their more nervous MPs now talk about the need to talk UKIP’s language while still doing what they’ve always done.

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In Opposing EVEL, Labour Struggles To Defend The Indefensible

Samuel Hooper3 Comments

Saltire Downing Street BBC EVEL constitutional reform scotland

 

It’s mighty hard to defend the Labour Party’s current position on devolution and constitutional reform.

Most normal people would not call loudly for a United Kingdom constitutional convention unless they had a brightly shining idea – hell, at least a rough approximation – of what they wanted to come out of it.

And if the concept of EVEL – English Votes for English Laws – is one of those acceptable outcomes, why not simply say so and sidestep all of the criticism now coming their way from the Conservative Party, the media and the general population?

But the Labour Party was silent or dismissive of EVEL during today’s parliamentary debate on the ramifications of the Scottish independence referendum decision precisely because they intend to use a UK constitutional convention (or rather, the distant prospect of one) as a convenient means of burying EVEL forever and maintaining their already heftily unfair electoral advantage in perpetuity.

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