TV election debate moderators 'too white and too middle class', say Lords

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/may/13/lords-tv-election-debates-middle-class-males

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A House of Lords committee has called for the monopoly of white middle aged presenters who fronted the 2010 election television debates to be broken up. The select committee on communications, which published its report about the debates on Tuesday, said there was clear public support for the debates but warned that a "whole range of obstacles" stood in the way of the exercise being repeated.

The committee, headed by Tory peer Lord Inglewood, called on broadcasters to do more to encourage voter participation in the elections and create an online "hub" where the debates could be watched on-demand.

Peers called for greater diversity among the moderators; the 2010 debates, broadcast over three successive weeks, were chaired by three white men: the BBC's David Dimbleby, ITV's Alastair Stewart and Adam Boulton on Sky News. Channel 4, whose Ask the Chancellors debate in 2010 was chaired by Krishnan Guru-Murthy, is also bidding for the 2015 debates.

"It was surprising to us and no doubt to the electorate as a whole, that there were no women and no members of ethnic minorities," the report said. Peers hoped broadcasters "make sure they consider the balance of gender and ethnic diversity among the moderators".

But they rejected suggestions from Nigel Farage's Ukip that participation in the debates should be decided by opinion polling or a US-style independent commission.

Ukip told the committee that the criteria for inviting parties to take part should be based less on past performance in elections and more on recent polling data. The committee said it had found "no good arguments for the introduction of such a body" which would either involve changing the entire system of broadcast regulation or have no impact at all.

David Cameron has indicated that he is interested in staging a variety of debates which could include one featuring all the party leaders – including Farage – and another which would pit him against Labour's Ed Miliband as the two men who could become prime minister.

Negotiations around the debates and the exact format they take – the 2010 broadcasts were governed by a list of 76 rules – are due to begin in the autumn.

The opinion poll surge enjoyed by Ukip since 2010 has led to calls for Nigel Farage to be included in the 2015 debates. The peers said that "surveys on voting intentions, particularly a long time ahead of an election, can be unstable and unreliable as a predictor of actual behaviour". They added: "The suggestion made by some that eligibility to participate in televised debates should be based on an established vote share threshold or solely on opinion polling should not be adopted. Instead, it must be recognised that the decision about who is invited to participate in televised programmes will have to continue to be one that is consistent with the legal and regulatory framework around broadcasting."

Inglewood said: "We hope that this report will … make it harder for any reluctant party leaders and their strategists to withdraw from participating in something which the public expects to happen and which, in a number of ways, can be seen to have been in the public interest."

The report said the 2010 debates "helped to energise and engage the public … with the most striking impact on the young and relatively disengaged". It added that their success made it "rightly much more difficult for reluctant party leaders and strategists" not to take part.