Gettng the media to shine the spotlight on us Greens

Whilst I was looking for work in the not-for-profit sector, the Green Party's candidate for the Newark by-election, David Kirwan, thankfully got rare coverage from the BBC to get the anti-austerity and green message across to Newark, particularly important as it is the first time we have stood in Newark since 1992. It has been reported in a related story that there apparently have been internal BBC memos instructing reporters to deliberately under-report the Green Party during the May elections.

 It could be worse, though. Sky News ended up lumping us with 'others' when giving the final tally of British MEPs, even though it is known that we Greens have 3 MEPs and the Liberal Democrats only have 1 MEP, and Channel Four giving an hour long documentary exclusive to UKIP leader NIgel Farage and Channel Four waiting very late to give us a slot for our party political broadcast-there was a week where it gave Labour, Conservatives, the Liberal Democrats, and UKIP a five minute broadcast slot each but not us. Although The Independent, the Guardian, the Huffington Post, and Morning Star have been kind enough to give us some useful coverage, their combined share of the media market is much less than that of the right-wing mainstream newspapers combined (Daily Express, Daily Telegraph, Daily Mail, The Sun etc.) who are blacking us out completely, and also other parties who are not one of the main four (Lab, Con, Lib Dem, UKIP).

The issue of media coverage is becoming more and more important to us Greens, particularly with a 38 Degrees petition against insufficient BBC coverage,created by Brightonian Young Green Portia Cocks, having gathered 40,000 signatures and counting as I write (we just need to push it to 100,000 plus!), and a recent Lord Ashcroft poll polling us at 7% in general election terms, and crucially above the Liberal Democrats' polling of 6%. (meanwhile, YouGov, who also distribute a lot of polls, keeps lumping us in with others) This is the first time we have polled above the Liberal Democrats in a general election poll, and it shows more and more people are warming to our message of hope not fear.

I hope the hard work of David in this by-election will mean we can surprise the media by achieving the 5% of the vote needed to have our deposit returned-difficult given that the East Midlands has never been that good in terms of Green potential.

Alan.




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

My analysis of the Swedish general election of 2022

The Swedish general election of 2022 generated some surprising results, despite also averting pollsters' predictions significantly. The last three years in particular proved to be a rough ride for the Social Democrat led governments of Stefan Lofven and Magdalena Andersson respectively. Although Sweden's laxer approach to the COVID-19 pandemic (compared to most countries in Europe, which imposed lockdowns during much of 2020 and 2021, an approach that arguably caused more problems than it solved) proved effective, Mr Lofven's desire to lift the austerity tax (which only affected a wealthy minority, similar in nature to the wealth tax initiative of former French President Francois Hollande) and to join NATO proved contentious, with two of the Social Democrats' former coalition partners (the Swedish Greens and Swedish Left Party, who had both pulled out of confidence and supply) unsurprisingly voting against Swedish accession to NATO membership (all other parties in the R
Read more

On the 2020 Serbian election: Why a boycott will only worsen things there

First of all, I apologise for the recent hiatus; however elections are still postponed or on hold in many countries, including the UK. Serbia, however, was able to proceed with its 2020 general election amidst this crisis. Its overall result proved reminiscent of Hungarian elections under Viktor Orban's tenure (2010-present), since the leading national-conservative coalition, the SNS (Progressive Party of Serbia) coalition led by Serbian President Aleksander Vucic (Ana Brnabic is the Serbian Prime Minister, and the first woman and openly homosexual person to hold that position), polled 61.6% of the vote, giving them as many as 191 seats out of 250 and a majority of as high as 132, almost unheard of in any country with proportional representation. Press freedom has endured significant curbs since President Vucic first came into power as Serbian PM in 2012 (he became President of Serbia in 2017), as have civil liberties of Serbs in general. Nepotism and corruption in the Serbian
Read more

On the Spanish regional elections of 2023-a warning for progressives

The Spanish regional elections of 2023, especially those in the "Empty Spain" regions far west of the federal capital of Madrid and prosperous yet famously rebellious Catalonia, resulted in a sharp shift towards conservatism and conservative populism. Both Partido Popular (PP, Spain's equivalent of the Conservatives) and Vox (the Spanish equivalent of Reform UK/UKIP) made sweeping gains in all regions, notably taking overall control in Madrid (normally an impossible feat under Spain's PR system), more than doubling their seat total in Valencia to top the poll there, and wresting control of Asturias, La Rioja, and Cantabria from the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE, Spain's equivalent of Labour) and the Cantabrian Regionalist Party respectively. Under the tenure of Pedro Sanchez, the current PSOE-Podemos coalition is floundering and has not done much to ensure Spain's recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic since the last restrictions ended in 2021, and P
Read more