Posts Tagged ‘Brussels’
Register to vote in European Parliamentary elections
With just over a month to go until the European elections on June 4th, the Electoral Commission has launched a voter registration campaign which includes this advert, currently being shown on prime-time TV.
It’s a great start, and will hopefully raise awareness about the elections, which traditionally suffer from very low turnout (in 2004, turnout was less than 40 per cent). What the advert doesn’t make clear enough, however, is the danger of not voting. Low turnout means that fringe parties, including the BNP, are in with a real chance of winning seats in some regions and representing us in Europe.
The EU suffers from an ambivalent and, at times, hostile, press in Britain. Yet decisions made in Brussels have a very real impact on all of our lives – registering to vote and ensuring that it is credible politicians who are making these decisions is the least we can do.
The Brussels Bubble
Coverage of the European Union in the British media is, quite frankly, awful. With the exception of Tony Barber’s excellent Brussels Blog for the FT and occasional articles in The Telegraph and The Times, reporting about the European Union is patchy at best and frequently completely negative about EU institutions and legislation.
In comparison, newspapers in other EU countries have dedicated daily pages to cover news from Brussels.
The reasons behind Britain’s haphazard and cynical coverage of the EU were debated at a journalism course I attended in Brussels this week. The first, and perhaps main reason, is that most newspapers do not even have a correspondent in Brussels. This makes it practically impossible for newspapers to understand the full story about developments in Brussels. Under this logistical pressure, it is easier for the journalist who has the task of writing an EU story from their desk in London to focus on the simple and quirky story, such as the recent coverage of the relaxation of EU legislation on the shape of fruit and vegetables.
The Sun campaign for a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty
Secondly, MEP Richard Corbett told me he believes that media ownership is a factor: the main media moguls in Britain – Rupert Murdoch, Lord Rothermere and the Barclay brothers – are all eurosceptics. In addition, Mr Corbett pointed out that it is easy for eurosceptic political parties to use a one-line soundbite to promote their views, whereas making a reasoned debate about the positive aspects of EU membership is not so media-friendly. The media is often guilty of using the quickest and most sensational line – such as The Sun’s 2007 campaign after Gordon Brown’s signing of the Lisbon Treaty “Never Have So Few Decided So Much For So Many” – without presenting the other side of the debate and, in this case, without explaining what the treaty actually means.
