John Osmond (Cardiff, IWA): Viewed from Cardiff ‘Our Kingdom' looks like being steadily prised apart, not by revolutionaries, separatists or even voters, but by a disinterested, uninformed, and frankly bored press and media. Over the past three months we in Wales have been going through an incredible upheaval brought on by an Assembly election and its aftermath, and an absorbing series of cliff-hanging coalition negotiations which lead to an unprecedented Red-Green alliance between Labour and Plaid Cymru. How have the London press and media responded? With a yawn and almost zero coverage. Suddenly it really seems the case that London is capital of a country as foreign to us in Wales as Denmark, France or Germany. During the campaign I read incredulously a Guardian editorial headed ‘The Forgotten Election' - certainly forgotten by the Guardian which at that point had failed to give it any coverage itself at all. When the coalition negotiations reached an apparent denouement, the London Times broke cover with a page lead, profiling Plaid Cymru leader Ieuan Wyn Jones as First Minister of a Rainbow coalition government involving the Tories and Liberal Democrats - what would have been a welcome bit of coverage, if the Liberal Democrats had not already pulled the plug on the deal when their Executive voted it down the night before.
On Tuesday this week there was an historic meeting of the British-Irish Council of the Isles when Gordon Brown high-tailed it to Belfast to meet up with Bertie Ahern, Alex Salmond, Ieuan Wyn Jones (now Deputy First Minister of Wales), Martin McGuiness and Ian Paisley. Notably, he was the only Labour man within this nascent confederation of the Isles. Was there a word in the press or media to comment on the significance? Not one that I saw or heard. The Guardian spoke about a whistle stop on the way to meet Angela Merkel in Germany.
Now this week the BBC's Audience Council for Wales has slammed the Corporation's UK-wide network news operation for its poor coverage of the National Assembly. In its first annual review since the abolition of the Governors and the new dispensation, it declares: "the Council was frustrated at network television news' continued inadequate reflection of the reality of devolution in the UK in its output, and the consequent implications for the reputation of BBC News." It speaks volumes about the new power relationships within the BBC that Janet Lewis-Jones, its National Trustee for Wales and Chair of the Audience Council for Wales had to pull out of an interview with the Cardiff Western Mail "because of a decision taken by senior BBC officials in London".
