Friday, June 05, 2009

Martin Belam on the vagaries of our media election rules

Martin Belam writes about the apparent discrepancy in our media electoral laws that led to the BBC yesterday having to turn off its comments on political blogs whereas the Sun continued to be

positively boasting that their 'radio station' was the only place that would be talking politics on election day


As Martin says

fair play to The Sun. They spotted a USP opportunity and seized it.
but as he adds

what does this tell us about our regulatory framework in a converged digital media landscape?

Can it be right that 'a newspaper with a website broadcasting radio' can behave differently on election day from 'a radio station with a website publishing text'? And come the next General Election, will we be talking about how 'It's SunTalk Wot Won It'?

1 comment:

Martin Belam said...

I should point out that Ian Burrell made virtually the same point before I did about SunTalk, before the BBC comment ban was mentioned on their blog to make an even more stark contrast.