While reporting an election won't necessarily make your heart race, it's a topic which is very much in the public interest and therefore part of our public duty as journalists to provide that service. The press is the so-called 'eyes and ears of the public', and it is usually only with our fast, accurate, fair and, above all, impartial coverage that the public can get an idea of who they want to vote for.
Impartiality
Impartiality is more important than ever during election time. The BBC have their own stringent Editorial Guidelines; every other broadcaster is subject to Ofcom. More than that, each party will be meticulously poring through every bit of political media coverage at the time, and if they think they've been shafted out of some airtime then you can rest assured that you'll be the first to know about it. So, there are both internal and external measures in place to make sure you get it right, and to quickly come down on you if you get it wrong.
It is important to note that newspapers can be as partisan as they like. The argument here is that it takes much more of an active effort on the part of the consumer to actually pick up and read a newspaper - broadcasting is by nature intrusive, and so that's why these rules only apply to broadcast media.
Back to broadcasting - if you're covering a story that includes a candidate soundbite from one major political party, then you've got to chase interviews up from the others; it's illegal around election time just to hear one political voice.
This can make it editorially difficult to run certain stories. You don't want to cram your story full of pompous self-servicing soundbites, but to stay within the guidelines and to not get harassed by shadowy PR people then you must. It's all or nothing.
The general rule is that you have to speak to all major party candidates, and possibly even a minor one if there is a real chance that their party could influence the outcome of the election.
In the UK, you typically have to grab quotes from the following:
Labour
Liberal Democrats
Conservatives
UKIP (depending on area - an example of when to include a party which might influence the outcome of the election.)
You don't have to speak to every minor fringe party if you don't want to - a particularly mental one might add some colour to the package, but it's your editor's choice to include that. If you did, you would also have to be careful to ensure you didn't give the fringe candidate a similar amount of airtime as you gave to a major party because then the impartiality of the piece would be rightly questioned.
Defamation
Delicious slander is hard to contain during any sort of political race. Door to door, campaigners and candidates will say some pretty hideous things about the opposition but that's accepted as par for the course and usually hard to prove in a court of law. Defamation is very different.
Phil Woolas is an ex Labour government minister who had held the Oldam East and Saddleworth seat in the 2010 general election. He subsequently lost that seat and was banned from standing for Parliament for three years after publishing two false statements about Lib Dem candidate in his election material. It said that Robert Watkins was 'wooing the extremist Muslim vote' and refused to condemn their use of violence.
He was charged with breaching the Representation of the People Act 1983, which slaps you with a £5,000 fine in addition to other punitive measures.
Representation of the People Act 1983
Section 106(1) - makes it a criminal offence to make or publish a false statement of fact about the personal character or conduct of an election candidate, if the purpose of publishing the false statement is to affect how many votes he/she will get.
According to McNae's, the law 'aims to deter dirty tricks by election candidates and their supporters', and isn't specifically aimed at the media - though, like with libel, the act of publishing of defamatory material leaves you culpable.
False statements don't have to be defamatory - a journalist was fined £250 in 1997 after alleging that an election candidate was gay. The statement was judged to be damaging not because everyone involved was 7 years old and in a school playground, but because such an allegation could cost a candidate votes if those with religious beliefs decided not to support the candidate based on the allegation.
Exit polls
An exit poll is a survey taken straight after people have voted in which they are asked how they voted. In some countries, reporting on opinion polls in addition to exit polls is shut down at least a week leading up to an election. Things aren't as strict here in the UK, but the results of exit polls absolutely must not be reported until polls have officially shut.
This is because the results of the exit poll might have a chance of skewing the results of the real one - if people hear that a certain party are being slaughtered then they might vote another way or not vote at all.
Representation of the People Act 1983
Section 66A makes it a criminal offence:
- to publish, before a poll is closed, any statement about how people have voted in that election, where this statement is, or might reasonably be taken to be, based on information they gave after voting;
- to publish, before a poll is closed, any forecast - including any estimate - of the election result if the forecast is based on exit poll information for voters, or which might reasonably to be taken to be based on it.
So what can we report on close to an election?
- Voter turnout
- Polls of how people intended to vote before the election began
- Mechanics of voting
- Voting fraud
- Election counts - media can attend these, but have no statutory right to be there, because it is all at the discretion of the Returning Officer at the polling station.
After polls have closed, all of these restrictions disappear, and it becomes open season on speculation and reporting of exit polls in full.
You still can't defame anyone, though. How disappointing.
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