Broadcasters too reliant on vox pop interviews and failing to challenge politicians, says study | Politics
Broadcasters are disappointing voters by relying on so-called pop reportage and failing to vet political claims during election campaigns, researchers say.
Cardiff University’s research It looked at how local elections in England, as well as national elections in Wales and Scotland this year, were covered on television news across the UK between 2 March and 6 May.
The report, written by Stephen Pillow, Keighley Perkins and Maxwell Modell from the School of Journalism, Media and Culture, found that strict rules requiring balanced reporting directly undermine the media’s ability to thoroughly scrutinize political promises.
For the first time, the BBC’s election guidelines labeled Labour, Conservatives, Reform, Liberal Democrats, Greens, Plaid Cymru and the SNP as “major parties”; Therefore, they are all expected to be at generally similar levels.
The researchers found that “a large proportion of the broadcast was devoted to vox pops”, appearing on 26.3% of all Welsh television coverage of the election, at the expense of addressing actual policies or political claims.
Pillow, who led the project, said: “In an age of multi-party politics, our new research raises serious questions about whether the UK’s current impartiality rules are fit for purpose during the election campaign. This doesn’t mean impartiality should be abandoned in a Fox News-style way, but the rules need to be rethought to give broadcasters the flexibility to impose greater scrutiny on daily reporting.”
“The public expects broadcasters to not only cover political parties during the campaign, but also to carefully scrutinize the promises they make and challenge false or misleading claims.”
The media’s ability to “deeply question particular policies” was severely restricted because “election rules require broadcasters to give parties roughly equal coverage during the campaign,” the authors said.
While broadcasters have successfully provided the six main parties with relatively balanced visibility across TV and digital platforms, the report concluded that “the breadth of coverage limits sustained scrutiny of party claims, policies or campaign messages”.
The report noted that “by prioritizing the breadth of party-political perspectives, the news did not consistently question the depth or credibility of competing claims.”
As a result, “more than 70% of politicians’ claims in TV news receive either no or limited scrutiny,” the researchers said.
Of television news stories that focused specifically on party policies, candidate interviews, or political claims, 49% featured zero scrutiny, 22% featured only a brief review, and only 29% featured a significant review.
Instead of comprehensive policy discussions, a significant portion of the news focused on the “horse race” elements of the election, such as “campaign events, party competition, public opinion, and the electoral process.”
The study also found that this lack of rigorous political questioning was compounded by an over-reliance on “vox pop” interviews with the public.
The report emphasized that with a total of 164 individual vox pop broadcasts, the voices of ordinary citizens were included “much more than the perspectives of political candidates.”
While the researchers acknowledged the value of understanding voters’ real-life concerns, they argued that “reliance on voice-overs on this scale wastes valuable airtime at the expense of policy news, examining political arguments and explaining the workings of the Welsh political system.”
Additionally, the short format of these interviews made them a “relatively blunt instrument,” the report said.
They were extremely effective at capturing general “snapshots of ideas” and recurring political apathy, but were “less successful in explaining the deeper reasons behind their views”.
Despite these interviews frequently emphasizing voter apathy and intent not to vote, researchers note that the voice-overs “failed to accurately capture the level of interest and participation in the campaign,” resulting in a record turnout rate of 52%; this is the highest ever rate for a devolved Welsh election.
The study examined the UK’s leading bulletins – BBC News at Ten, ITV News at Ten and Channel 4 News – as well as the major evening bulletins in Wales: BBC Wales Today and ITV Wales at Six.
He did not look at the ITV Evening News, which usually broadcasts for an hour at 6.30pm.
ITN believes the report underestimates its overall output by focusing solely on News at Ten. ITV broadcasts around two hours of national news daily as well as regional programmes. The ITV Evening News reaches twice the audience of News at Ten and covers political views.
The program featured a number of episodes dealing with vital national issues such as transport and health in Wales, rural poverty, oil and the ferry scandal in Scotland.
ITV News also provides complementary digital content, including voting commentary and social media interviews with political leaders.
The BBC declined to comment.
