Letter to Ofcom - GMTV's political coverage

Dear OfCom,

I would like to complain about GMTV's coverage yesterday of Parliament's discussions about electing a new Speaker of the House.

While I realise that Ann Widdecombe and Margaret Beckett are two well-known Members of Parliament, providing an element of recognition to GMTV's viewers instead of other contenders who will likely be faceless grey men (emphasis mine) to their audience, any decent broadcaster would have shown caution at an attempt to popularise this important election.

Given the wholesale loss of confidence in Parliament at the moment and the desperate need for our Institutions to repair their reputation, one crucial element of this process will be the successful dissemination of information and education about what is actually happening in Parliament.

For this reason, to choose the easy option of focussing on Beckett and Widdecombe (which, I admit sounds a bit like an ITV detective series) in some half-hearted attempt to treat the election for the speaker as if it is a grown up Big Brother is an example of shoddy half-baked political reporting which will cause as much disaffection as anything else.

Let me be clear about two things: neither Beckett or Widdecombe will win the election for the speaker and I do not want to see Eamon Holmes in a bikini.

Any decent political editor will have been able to advise GMTV that Beckett is unlikely to win, because the mood of the House is that the next speaker must be a Conservative after two Labour MPs, and Widdecombe has practically denied herself a victory by deciding to step down as an MP at the next General Election.

To choose to focus on these two MPs, raises an important question about the interplay between politics and popular broadcasting.  People all around the country who wouldn't normally talk about politics yesterday started gossiping around the water cooler about who the next speaker would be - that much is a good thing and shows the power of the popular media to engage people with the political crisis we are facing. 

However those same people think it is a battle only between Beckett and Widdecombe - that is a bad thing.  When it turns out to be neither, what can we say for people's engagement with politics then? 

Viewers have been neither educated or informed and instead their looming disengagement is a direct response to GMTV breaking the social contract between broadcaster and viewer - I will watch, if you are honest with me.

SH