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Live televised debates are a fixture of political campaigns. The iconic debate in 1960 US presidential candidates Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy, drawing 70 million viewers, marked the turning-point in campaigning. It was in black and white. From that point forward, no candidate anywhere dismissed the importance of television. And every campaign took seriously its role.
With a general election fast approaching, UK television broadcaster Channel 4 offered political party leaders an opportunity to debate - mostly state their case - on climate change, a subject of increasing popular and political importance. The Channel 4 debate took place Thursday night (November 28). Five political party leaders arrived at the appointed hour. Two did not, Prime Minister Boris Johnson, Conservative Party leader, and Nigel Farage, leader of the Brexit Party. Places were set for those absent with ice sculptures of planet Earth. (See more about elections and media here)
The Conservative Party sent a substitute for PM Johnson but, citing agreed rules for the event stating it was for party leaders only, he, Michael Gove, was turned away. The debate proceeded as the ice sculptures melted under the hot TV lights. The theater was not lost on anybody.
Conservative Party press spokesperson Lee Cain railed and fired off a complaint to broadcast regulator OFCOM about “a wider pattern of bias by Channel 4 in recent months” and threatening, if voters take their side in December, to unleash wrath on the channel’s broadcast license, reported the Financial Times (November 28). OFCOM is in the midst of a general review of public broadcasting, which includes the BBC and Channel 4. The media regulator confirmed, according to Press Gazette (November 29), it has received over 100 complaints regarding the TV debate.
Not taking all this lightly, Channel 4 news editor Ben de Pear took to social media: “Stop behaving like Donald Trump with the press and media. Don’t refuse (and) then threaten our license.” Two generations now separate us from the Nixon/Kennedy TV debate. The form has been diminished to just another slice of political theater, narrated on social media.
Local newspapers closing or giving up print editions for the digital-only world is hardly a new story. Many have closed, restructured, reinvented or simply vaporized. The disappearances more recently raise a different warning.
Sweden’s Gota Media announced this week closing of local newspaper Östra Småland and Nyheter, which has served Kalmar County in southeast Sweden since the 1920’s. Chairman Bennie Ohlsson cited “major profitability problems,” quoted by Dagens Media (November 26). Synergies, he added, “are no longer enough to get the finances into balance.” Newspaper publishers are, generally, for-profit businesses. (See more about media in Sweden here)
Former Östra Småland reporter and photographer Hakan Juholt, currently Sweden’s ambassador to Iceland, penned the final editorial column:
"The local paper is our common society, the world we share. Our community. The many voices. Newborns, weddings and funerals. Ice hockey and abstracts from senior meetings. Fires, decisions and opinions.
"Now we don't meet anymore.
"We have already started moving into our smaller communities. The comfortable and simple. A Facebook group of like-minded, a known tweeter to follow, any influencer to be inspired by.
"It's not a newspaper that's closed down. It's a society that dies."
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