THERE were 140 BBC journalists in the United States for the Presidential election last autumn. How many, one wonders, were dispatched to Northern Ireland for this week’s Stormont election?
Unless you are a political junkie it’s possible that the election on Thursday came as something of a surprise. Coverage in the UK media has been at best sparse, sometimes verging on the non-existent. And yet here was an election caused by a political scandal sparked by the botched Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI) “cash for ash” scheme which ensnared the First Minister yet saw her refuse to stand aside. Here was an election in a political system designed to create power sharing in which it was not clear whether the largest nationalist party would even return to government when the votes were cast. This was an election that therefore might result in a return to direct rule from Westminster.
And this was an election set against the backdrop of Brexit, the fall-out from which will be felt in this particular part of the United Kingdom more directly than any other, the only part of the nation where the question of a hard or soft border is directly relevant. And that is over and above what Brexit might mean for our closest neighbours in the Republic of Ireland
All in all, worth a bit of attention then, you might think.
Now clearly there is no equivalence between the election of the most powerful man in the world and the election of an assembly whose political story since the Good Friday Agreement almost 20 years ago has often been one of stalemate, disruption and suspension. (A resort to direct rule has been a regular enough occurrence in the years since 1998.)
Even so, the gap between the media’s interest in all things American and what is happening in one of the constituent parts of the United Kingdom is startling.
You could stretch this point further and argue that Ukip, a party which has one disaffected MP at Westminster, still has a huge media footprint all out of proportion when compared with that of parties who have been elected to the House of Commons and the devolved parliaments and who are actually in government in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
Setting aside the current austerity economics of news reporting, this pattern is, of course, a reflection of the UK’s natural centralising tendencies in both politics and the media and a concomitant neglect of the “regions” (if you dare use such a word when it comes to the bits of the UK that aren’t England).
Scottish Nationalists and equally Ulster Unionists might argue it was ever thus of course. But at a time when the political picture in the UK is more murky and confused than it has been for a long time it’s an attitude that could do with a shake-up.
Against this backdrop the BBC’s recent announcement that it is planning to launch a dedicated Scottish television channel is intriguing, but begs questions too. Who will it speak to? Is it solely for a Scottish audience or will it be more ambitious than that? Will it, in short, attempt to explain Scotland to the rest of the United Kingdom? Answers next autumn hopefully.
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