Published in The Khaleej Times.
One of the most exciting features about the general election campaign currently being fought in Britain has been the relegation to the sidelines of the media, especially the political commentary writers. This has been due partly to the introduction of TV debates between the leaders on the three parties, Labour, Conservatives and Liberals, and partly to the intervention of the Internet, particular the Twitterati.
How the political leaders must be ruing the day that they agreed to the TV debates. And how the political commentators must be kicking themselves for failing to realise that the debates would make them redundant.
For election after election the public has relied on the political commentators to tell them how the candidates were doing, what they stood for and why they should or should not vote for them. This made these media people all powerful. Suddenly this power has been taken away from them, never to be returned. Instead everyone who watched the TV debates could learn for themselves what the candidates policies were, how well they were presented and get an impression of whether their political masters were to be trusted to keep their promises. The intermediaries were removed.
They put up a fight, of course. The moment the debates had ended the TV coverage switched to the various political party rooms where the media interviewed the party spin doctors who tried to put the best possible face on their masters’ performances. It was embarrassing to watch as, of course, each spin doctor claimed a victory for his boss.
It was also embarrassing because we, the viewers, were able to compare the reality of what we had just seen to the fantasy world that the spin doctors and political commentators painted for us. The thought inevitably came to us that perhaps there had always been this gap.
The media tried to blame the leader of the Liberals, Nick Clegg, for their sidelining. There had been a swing to him because he was “TV friendly” and had handled the demands of the medium brilliantly. But behind the panic was the realisation that Clegg’s platform includes the introduction of a fairer voting system and a more transparent party funding system.
If Clegg should win or hold a balance of power, the media would suffer. As George Monbiot, one of the few progressive columnists covering the election, put it: “The press barons would no longer be able to push an unrepresentative party into office or easily manipulate it once it’s there.
“The liberal press claims to provide an antidote to these powers, but it still allows them to frame the question. It is obsessed by Westminster politics and the narrow range of interests that divide the main parties, while neglecting both the external forces that limit political choice and the grassroots movements that seek to confront them.”
Simultaneously, we have the arrival of twitter on the political scene. Some of Clegg’s most fervent supporters can be found on Twitter and the other parties will ignore them at their peril. The more the conventional political press has turned on Clegg, the greater has been his support on Twitter.
Tweeters used the social networking site to lampoon the Conservative press, particularly the Daily Mail, Daily Telegraph and Sun, which had been running scare stories trying to blame Clegg for all Britain’s ills. The big thing about all this is that the tweeters are young. Many have not voted before. Many did not plan to vote this time around. But the demise of the professional political commentator and the advent of the TV political debate have drawn them into this election in a big way. Now they may well decide who wins. It can only be good for democracy.
