Finger Jabbing, Faces Bursting Red With Anger, Asking Questions But Not Allowing Full Answers –The UK 24-Hour News Channels General Election Aftermath Had Everything And Most Of It Was Great

Philip M. Stone May 12, 2010 Follow on Twitter

Let’s face it, repetitive news on the half-hour is, well, boring, but for the British, who are used to a losing prime minister immediately packing his bags and the moving trucks loaded outside 10 Downing Street, the political bargaining over the past five days was riveting and the UK’s two 24-hour news channels really came of age.

And as journalists and political spin doctors carried on with a minimum of sleep the live coverage became even hotter and more fascinating. Everyone seemed lulled by the Monday afternoon – four days after the election -- that a pact between the Liberals and the Conservatives could be announced within hours but then suddenly Prime Minister Gordon Brown dropped a bombshell saying he would give up being Labor Party leader in a few months and that formal coalition discussions with the Liberal Democrats would begin immediately. That about-turn was more than some journalists could stomach.

Sky News’ Political Editor Adam Boulton, for instance, just could not contain his anger with Alistair Campbell, a leading Labor Party adviser, over Campbell’s explanation of why Brown did what he did. Boulton kept asking Campbell if the electorate really wanted Labor that won the second highest in the number of seats in the election, and the Liberal Democrats that had the third largest, to stitch up a coalition that would leave the Conservatives that just fell short of a majority still filling Parliament’s Opposition benches, let alone have a prime minister in such a coalition whom the electorate had not known would be prime minister (a new party leader is elected by the Party, not by the electorate). 

Boulton, his face getting redder and redder, kept interrupting Campbell’s responses and it wasn’t long before Boulton basically lost it, finger jabbing at Campbell, yelling at him several times, “Don’t you tell me what I am thinking” and it was left to Campbell, the guest,  to keep reminding Boulton, the TV guy, that they were on live TV.  Not your normal interview and great TV!

Anchor Jeremy Thompson standing with them couldn’t really get a word in edgewise but at least the director understood this was live TV at its political best and let it run before the control room apparently decided enough was enough – it was really embarrassing for their political editor – and the station went to a live report from Parliament. Whatever objectivity Boulton had appeared to have on the surface disappeared in that exchange (Sky is part of the Murdoch stable and all four Murdoch UK newspapers heavily supported the Conservatives). In this case the soft-spoken Campbell was the class act, something that is not often said about him. Sky later applauded Boulton for defending his integrity. And Boulton later has another on-air row with a Labor cabinet member.

But it wasn’t just Boulton who seemed to be suffering from sleep deprivation. The BBC prides itself on its correspondents not showing any bias but when they were called upon to give instant analysis on a breaking event before any of their senior political sources had time to Blackberry them then it didn’t take much listening between the lines to hear where they were really coming from, too. BBC political Editor Nick Robinson kept calling the Brown intervention “audacious” – a term that others promptly picked up; well, perhaps to some it was “audacious” but to others it may have been seen as “brilliance” – is it the BBC’s remit to decide which? News becomes far more opinionated, it seems, in direct relationship to how tired the correspondent and/or how long the story goes.

Indeed, as you watched all of the BBC’s various correspondents and all of Sky’s people starting from election night on through Tuesday night  the real question for the news junkies became, “When do these people sleep”,  for it seemed no matter whether it was breakfast TV or the late news there they were, on live.

Both Sky News and the BBC News channel did themselves proud. One might think the BBC’s financial resources would give them a big advantage, but Sky more than held its own. Flipping from one channel to another it seemed both were well on top of all facts of the story, although Sky did slip Monday night when the Tories made what they said was their last offer to the Lib Dems on a voting referendum which the BBC had live, but Sky could only manage an audio feed. But basically whatever could be covered live got covered live. Sky dumped its advertising when events moved fast; the BBC, of course, didn’t have such a problem.

The all-nighters began election night. The BBC’s star anchor, David Dimbleby, 71, went 13 hours straight – he was supposed to have been off the air in eight hours but there was really no clear result until mid morning although the original exit poll released when the polls closed but which no one believed because it showed the Liberal Democrats doing so badly actually turned out to be very accurate. Another BBC presenter, Emily Maitlis, felt things had gone on for so long that she needed a wardrobe change and out went the black and white suit and in came the all-red dress (Labor’s color is red so was that a subliminal message?)

There were election voting problems -- in some constituencies (precincts) the polling station doors closed as the law dictates at 10 p.m. with several hundred voters still standing in line, many in the rain, and denied their right to vote. Some precincts also ran out of ballots. Dimbleby couldn’t contain himself, at one point calling it all a “scandal”  and saying such things happen in third world countries, not in Britain; well, yes, but is it up to the BBC to make such pronouncements or should be public be reaching its own conclusions when given all the details?  It seems the old rules of just telling us the facts without making a judgment may be “outmoded’ public service journalism today.

If there was any part of the election night coverage that shames the BBC it would be the interviews it conducted with various entertainment personalities throughout the night. The BBC used some £50,000 of license payer money to rent a large boat docked at the London Eye near Parliament, wined and fed everyone and then conducted some really benign interviews which completely wasted Andrew Neal, one of the BBC’s top political commentators. Did any of us really care what entertainer Bruce Forsythe or actress Joan Collins thought about the election? It was as if the BBC found a substitute for commercial breaks so everyone could have a time-out at least once an hour. Horrible.

But apart from the hosted parties – terrestrial commercial channel ITV1 had one, too -- Britain’s broadcasters showed just how good they really can be on such an important story. The pity for ITV is that it has no 24-hour news channel so after election day it could only compete via scheduled newscasts or interruptions when absolutely necessary to scheduled programming. Too bad no one at ITV thought about converting one of its digital channels – ITV 2, 3, or 4 -- to all-news for a while; no doubt a lot easier to suggest than to do, and expensive, but it would have been a golden opportunity to have enhanced ITV’s news reputation.

After five days Gordon Brown finally threw in the towel when his own Party basically said it was wrong to try and remain in power with the Liberal Democrats. There seemed to be a great deal of sympathy for Brown the man as he said goodbye to the country and then led his wife and two young boys down the street away from Number 10. The word most used in later reports was “dignified” and that one they can get away with!

For five days it was tough to leave the news channels and the ratings showed it with double, triple even quadruple normal viewership being recorded. During times when the main BBC and ITV channels themselves showed live coverage their combined share got up to around 45%. With David Cameron now in and the cabinet getting announced it will soon be back to boring, repetitive news coverage. But for those five days it was really glorious live TV.

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