Tonight’s leaders’ debate on TV should be interesting, if I can remember to watch it. The debates have already divided opinion between those who like the idea and those who don’t. The objectors object because they say it turns the election into a contest of personalities rather than policies and on the grounds that it is ‘a bit American’. I think that trivia already dominates a lot of election coverage anyway (Sarah Brown’s toes?) so the debates aren’t going to make it any worse. As for being American, for reasons I don’t have time to go into now I don’t think that is necessarily a bad thing.  If we ever get around to major reforms of our system there is a lot we could crib from the American political arrangements.
What I wonder is how many people will actually watch it, and how many of them will immediately turn over (or stay tuned) to watch the news, which will be entirely dominated by the debate. More to the point, how many of them are the same people who can’t understand why, having spent 90 minutes watching a football game some of us then need to spend another 30 minutes watching three blokes in a studio talking about that game.
I’m not against the debates, but I bet I will get irked by the newspaper coverage of them.
As for the news tonight… isn’t Charlie Brooker back on Channel 4 tonight at 10pm? No contest!
What next ? Televised show trials ? Televised executions
It’s a MediaFest – TV Media providing fodder for Newspaper Medua & vice-versa.
Viewers (potential voters) are the spectators – or, as Chomsky says, the viewer is the ‘product’ being sold by corporate buyers (advertisers) to corporate
sellers (eg iTV).
In other words, it’s good business – but it ain’t good democracy.
The media man fluffed it. Cameron was scary….am I being really rotten has he got skin problems? He had so much make up on I kept waiting him to say “because were worth it” Gordon was better than I expected and Clegg had it easy as he could say in “Elect me and I will put a man on Uranus” its never going to happen but we can all dream
I see our ‘enry is quite happy to discuss local ales (a real man of the people) but will not apologies for a blatant lie on the MB forum…those posters must be mugs to believe the spin.