For the West Country media, this election is about fox-hunting and badgers – and indifference to voters’ real concerns

Trailing four pre-General Election The Politics Show specials,  the BBC last week told us what it has decided are the General Election ‘issues that matter in the South West.’

‘Some of the big issues in the South West’, declared BBC TV’s Spotlight political editor Martyn Oates in last Thursday’s programme,’ are hunting, the elderly, bovine TB and the economy’.

Now I am prepared to bet the equivalent of Mr Oates’ annual salary, that if I were to wander the streets of St Ives or Penzance, or any other town in Cornwall or Devon, very few people would mention hunting or bovine TB as an issue for them at the General Election. They would  certainly mention the economy, and probably the Cornish Economy, the plight of the elderly, the shortage of affordable homes, unemployment, the problem of travelling to distant hospitals, of surviving when you get there, of the shortage of NHS dentists, of inadequate local transport and of the struggle to make ends meet on a minimum wage or benefits.

But the possibility of a Cameron free vote on hunting would be far from their minds as would be bovine TB.

Just as Spotlight decided that the major effect of the Budget on the region was the 10% increase in the tax on cider, so again we have a media view of the region’s priorities that is different from that of the man or woman in Fore Street. Why?

Because regional TV journalism isn’t about going out to the grassroots, searching out stories that reflect the lives and problems of the community,  or doing investigative work, or scrutinising those who govern us at the local level. It’s rather about skimming off stories from the local print media, which is itself increasingly less likely to be the watchdog for us it once was and should be. Today, the local press is often largely the medium for recycling press releases fed to it  by organisations and individuals who just want to push their own agendas. It’s indifferent to real lives.

So don’t expect local reportage of the coming election to be anything more than a lazy selection of the ‘big issues’ journalists find easy to package and present from the comfort of the studio or the road show. That at a time of deep economic crisis for the country and the South West, the BBC should for one moment think fox- hunting could or should be ‘a big issue’ at the coming election, should leave us in no doubt of the contempt with which the ordinary concerns of ordinary folk are held by the West Country media.