Law lecture 8- Elections

This week's lecture was on reporting elections; what perfect timing! I couldn't think of a better time to cover this issues considering I have two perfect examples of election reporting that we have covered on WINOL. Firstly the Hampshire police commissioner election debate, secondly the American election that WINOL also covered and then finally the fact that on the day of the actual lecture there were three by elections. So elections are things that happen often, despite there only being a general election every four years.

Elections are covered as they are of an interest to the public and part of journalism being the fourth estate. Journalism reporting such issues ensure transparency and fairness, but with all other types of reporting, there are certain rules that have to be abide by to ensure fairness and to make sure that you as a journalist don't find yourself in legal issues.

When reporting elections as a broadcaster you have to show balance, accuracy, impartiality and also make sure if you are doing one report a week on candidates that there is also balance over time. The major parties have to be covered and minor parties or parties that could be influential in a certain areas can also be mentioned in a news package before an election. I though it was great to show how we as student journalists are already keeping to these rules and reporting elections correctly already so for my first example of a recent election that we have covered is the HPPC election news reports on WINOL, where we made sure that a profile on each candidate was made each week and therefore we covered each candidate with the same amount of time in each VT ensuring that if one candidate lost they couldn't blame this coverage for that. These packages showed balance, accuracy, impartiality as they each had the same time and were done in a random order to avoid any bias. They were balanced over time and therefore they were safe to run. I thought that this was brilliant reporting reading up to the election.

I found it interesting that newspapers don't have to follow these rules on bias and balance over time. It is something that only broadcasters have to worry about, but I wondered why today this rule is still upheld; it seems like an out of date rule and leads to papers having bias over certain candidates in elections. I personally feel that like broadcasters  newspapers should also have to show balance over time or impartiality during elections.

Because it is often the case that citizens use our reports to choose who they feel they should choose during an election it is important to ensure that you do not report any false statements and that every fact that you say is correct; this is true in reporting generally but even more so in an election campaign because this could affect the results of a campaign and this is the first excuse that a politician will come out with if they lose. They will look for someone to blame and your report could be the reason. Therefore it is important that statements are reporting correctly and opinion/exit polls are not reported until after the polls have closed. My example for this point is again one that WINOL reported themselves and something that I reported in particular. I went to the American embassy in London to report for WINOL on the American election and there was a lot of talk about certain states being won by either the democrats or republicans before any projected results were announced. However despite having people come up to me and saying 'oh Obama has won....' I correctly decided not to report anything until exit polls were released. This ensures fairness  impartiality and accurate reporting by not getting caught up with reporting rumors or leaked material. This is vital because any reports which do leak current information on certain election results could affect the way other voters decide to vote and therefore the outcome of the election.

Looking at the Phil Woolas case was very interesting as it showed that something that I felt that politicians could get away with on there leaflets, by talking about other candidates and trying to gain extra votes is extra sensitive during an election. You can't get away with misrepresenting another candidate even if you are a candidate yourself. It is important to report only the facts during an election. We saw with the by elections that took place recently, the material that could be reported on the day of the election was so slim that they decide to report about expected turn out for the election and the weather! Better to be safe than sorry.

I feel that reporting elections is something that I have the hang of already but it was good to look over it and see that I was correctly reporting already and already knew the main points.