"Keep the red flag flying, Auntie"

So Ed Miliband is concerned that the BBC isn't giving Labour the coverage it merits in its news programmes.   William Hague and Iain Duncan Smith doubtless felt similarly ignored as Tory leaders in the late 1990s and early 2000s.   

Does any of it equate to bias?   Hardly - just a simple, if harsh, political reality.    Leader of The Opposition is a tough gig when your party has been kicked out after more than a decade in power.   It is even tougher when the replacement government is a once-in-a-generation (so far) coalition, making decisions which are having such a direct impact on everyday life.   Competition for minutage in news bulletins is fierce.

Broadcast media will always gravitate towards the doers, rather than the would-doers.   That's hardly news.   And neither - sadly for Ed - is every policy announcement that comes out of Labour HQ on a wet Wednesday afternoon.   However, does the Opposition really have it all that bad when it comes to broadcast coverage?   Just this weekend, Miliband's declaration that Labour has a "very clear plan" duly appeared on bulletins on the BBC, ITV and Channel 4.   In fact, all of the mainstream political parties know full well that making any kind of statement on a Saturday or Sunday virtually guarantees a packaged or live slot on the weekend television news.

The welcome impartiality of broadcast news in the UK means that even when Government policy is being reported, comment is usually afforded to the Opposition.   Then there are the set-piece party conferences, which command high profile coverage on television and radio for much of September, and the carefully-calculated quotas which apply to broadcast news to ensure absolute fairness of exposure in the run up to a General Election.   With specialist, well-staffed, political reporting teams across the BBC and commercial networks, the average citizen wants for little in terms of political broadcast coverage.  And neither - in truth - do the political parties themselves.

All of which makes it somewhat curious that Labour should turn its ire on the BBC, in particular.   With the breadth and depth of its political coverage (both within mainstream news bulletins and specialist programming), Labour must surely get more exposure via the Corporation than any other broadcaster.   Moreover, the party's recent themes of "too far, too fast" and "the squeezed middle" do seem to have found sufficient exposure somewhere to become part of current political discourse. 

Perhaps Labour's complaint against the BBC is born out of frustration at the coverage the party is receiving in the print press.   Whatever the reason, it gives the distinct impression that senior Labour figures believe the BBC is duty bound to follow, slavishly, every esoteric twist of its years out of power.   It isn't.   The path to greater exposure for any Opposition lies in having more to say that is deemed - by an impartial, public service broadcaster - to be newsworthy.   To that end, Labour knows exactly what it has to do.

To borrow (and conflate) a phrase from Private Eye - that's just how politics and journalism work.

Judgement call

Coverage of the verdict in the Stephen Lawrence murder trial this week resulted in some broadcast news reports that might have had the most cautious of media lawyers heading for the hills.   The possible involvement of other individuals whom the police have long referred to as "prime suspects" in the killing, prompted an understandable question - where might the case go from here?   

Cue one report about previous stabbings "connected" to the gang - none of which were brought to court and one of which involved the death of an Asian man - and a live debate in which claims went unchallenged about the influence that the father of one of the convicted men might have had in scuppering the original police investigation into the entire gang.   Outrageous?   Not really - and for several reasons.

First, although the police have been at pains to stress that their investigation is very much on-going, there is not, at this stage, an active criminal case (in the legal sense of the term - no arrest, no charges) against any of the individuals identified as "prime suspects".   In that respect, the case is quite unusual - police would normally restrict descriptions of "prime suspects" either to individuals that were at large and in need of tracing or those against whom criminal proceedings were in the process of being brought.   Neither applies in this instance.

So does that mean that the more responsible news organisations, like the broadcast media, should restrict their reporting on the basis that a trial against these individuals is possible (maybe not even likely) in the future?  The law does not explicitly require such caution and, in a case like this one, there would surely be little point.    The suspects, if they do ever become defendants, will have to overcome a whole archive of adverse publicity in the public consciousness.   They, like the now convicted David Norris and Gary Dobson, will have to rely on the capacity of jurors to follow the judge's directions to reach a verdict only on the evidence presented in court.  Such directions should not give the media carte blanche to recklessly publish prejudicial information (particularly after arrest or charge), but they are increasingly the only method of ensuring fairness in the most high profile of cases.

Broadcast media have earned a reputation (albeit not totally unblemished) for responsible reporting of criminal cases, particularly when contrasted to the breath-taking disregard of some sections of the tabloid press.   Just twelve months ago, several newspapers were in the process of conducting the character assassination of Chris Jeffries, the landlord wrongly accused of murdering his tenant Joanna Yates.   Fortunately, he did not end up in the dock and he later successfully sued for libel.

Broadcasters do have a fine tradition of constructing and, let's not forget, deconstructing criminal cases against individuals - it was the stock-in-trade of programmes like World In Action and Rough Justice for many years.   Whilst broadcast news organisations should strive to remain within the letter and the spirit of the law regarding prejudice, it would be an unfortunate side-effect if that led to sterile reporting.   The coverage of the continuing Stephen Lawrence investigation is an example of the broadcast media perhaps pushing the boundaries a little more than it usually would.   The fact that this is done rarely and selectively should enhance, rather than diminish, its standing as a trusted source.   Responsible and meaningful should not be incompatible aspirations.