UKIP's party conference took place in Llandudno over the weekend, and the BBC devoted two programmes to it ... in the same way as they've covered the LibDem and Labour conferences, and will cover those of the Tories and Plaid. If you have a strong stomach, you can watch them here and here.
As it happens, the Greens' party conference also took place over the weekend, and the BBC ... umm, didn't cover it. In fact the BBC have a track record of not treating the Greens in the same way as they treat UKIP.
So, for the sake of some balance, here's a video of Alice Hooker-Stroud's speech.
Alice is leader of the Green Party in Wales and number one on the Mid and West Wales list. She was introduced by Amelia Womack, who is number one on the South Wales Central list. If we're going to have a Green AM in the Senedd in May, it will be one—or perhaps both—of these.
2 comments:
I have sympathy here for both Auntie's Welsh political bods (they are mainly men) and the Greens. The unofficial, unstated, object has long been to try and set the bar just too high for the BNP/NF. Although this failed in England after the fash won 2 MEPs at the 2009 Euros I don't know if the internal guidelines on political balance and the public service obligation have changed much or are nowadays online anywhere. I'd expect this will be the last year in which the Welsh Lib Dems will qualify for conference coverage. Fair criteria in Wales, given that the multiparty politics now emerging will be tricky to determine and rather depend on larger questions about the BBC's funding in the internet age where the licence fee - (which is nowadays effectively a poll tax on every UK household) on which the public service remit ultimately depends - faces a highly uncertain future.
So far as the BBC is concerned, I think the situation in Wales is probably better than elsewhere, Democritus. Notably, the coverage of UKIP's conference was done by BBC Cymru Wales, not by a "UK-wide" political team, even though it was their UK-wide conference. So far as I can see, the programme wasn't broadcast outside Wales (not even on BBC Parliament) but of course it is available for anyone to watch on iPlayer. Another plus is that the BBC do both an English and a Welsh version, and although there is some duplication in terms of speeches, the interviews are different.
The Greens conference was held in Harrogate. Clearly no-one in BBC UK thought fit to cover it, and that is shameful. The question is whether it would have been covered by BBC Cymru Wales if it had been held somewhere in Wales. I genuinely don't know the answer. More likely, I guess, but not certain. Perhaps the Greens should arrange for their next conference to be in Wales.
As for the LibDems, even though they're only guaranteed to get one Senedd seat I can't really imagine the BBC not covering their Welsh conferences. True, they might not qualify using objective criteria, but the BBC is an inherently conservative, slow-to-change organization. By the time they get round to putting the question on the table, LibDem fortunes might well have revived.
Post a Comment