96% of BBC television news of phone-hacking ignored the House of Commons debate

My optimism about the televising of the phone-hacking debate in the House of Commons yesterday was, as I feared, short-lived (HERE). I'd ended my post on it with an open question about Chris Bryant, M.P., whose speech had opened proceedings.

"Whether or not we'll get to see any more of him (or any of the other speakers in the debate) on prime-time television news programmes tonight, of course, remains to be seen..."

Answer = 36 seconds

Impressive speech though Bryant's may have been, only 14 seconds of it made it on to BBC 's News at 10 last night (still available HERE on iPlayer). And all we got to see from the other speakers in the debate was 22 seconds of the speech by Tom Watson, M.P. Of the Attorney General's speech, we saw 0 seconds.

So a paltry 4% of the 15 minutes of news devoted to the News of the World phone-hacking scandal came from the important debate between our elected members of parliament.

PMQs more important than a proper parliamentary debate?

If the weekly exchanges between the prime minister and leader of the opposition count as 'speeches', the BBC showed us more than twice as much of Cameron (46 seconds) and Miliband (38 seconds) in action than of Bryant and Watson in the main debate - i.e. nearly 10% of the 15 minutes on phone-hacking.

And this is one of the (many) things that strikes me as so depressing about the media's coverage of politics. Compared with the rowdy Punch & Judy show of prime minister's question time, yesterday's debate (on the same subject) showed our MPs at their best - making serious and carefully argued points in a very reasonable and civilised manner.

With the BBC preferring to broadcast (at our expense) rowdiness rather than reason from the House of Commons, is it any wonder that our politicians are held in such low repute?

Meanwhile, "the BBC encourages you to embed its video and audio on your website" (as we're told in the instructions at Democracy Live).

This raises the interesting question of whether the BBC has decided not to bother showing much from speeches on its prime-time news programmes because anyone with a computer can watch the whole 3 hour debate online (as here):

Phone-hacking debate brings speeches back to our TV screens - at least for a few hours

After years of writing and blogging about the reluctance of British television news programmes to broadcast much from speeches (e.g. HERE & HERE), I was delighted that, for today at least, we were allowed to watch the House of Commons debate on phone-hacking live, continuously and without any intervention by reporters telling us what the speakers were saying - and to be able do so simultaneously on three channels, BBC News 24, BBC Parliament and Sky News.

It's a very long time since this has happened, and I'm hoping that it could mark a significant change in the attitude of broadcasters towards speeches and doesn't merely turn out to be a rare exception that proves a rule.

Given my suggestion that interviews have taken over from speeches as the main means of political communication in the UK as a result of collusion between politicians and the media, I was particularly struck by the first 30 seconds of this clip from the opening speech by Chris Bryant, M.P., who also seems worried about our politicians colluding with the media.

Whether or not we'll get to see any more of him (or any of the other speakers in the debate) on prime-time television news programmes tonight, of course, remains to be seen...

P.S. You can now watch the whole of this 3 hour debate (and find out how much of it was shown on BBC Television's News at 10) in the next blog post HERE.

American woman rises to the occasion with a speech on 4th July

I know that there are other bloggers like Angela DeFinis (@AngelaDeFinis) and Marion Chapsal (@marionchapsal), who are always on the lookout for examples of effective speech-making and presentation by women leaders.

Previously, I've posted some thoughts on former prime minister Margaret Thatcher and Facebook COO Cheryl Sandberg.

Today, at the unveiling of a statue of Ronald Reagan outside the US embassy in London, the speech by Condoleezza Rice (above) struck me as being both just right for the occasion and well-worth adding to my collection.