{"id":7942,"date":"2024-06-04T12:59:49","date_gmt":"2024-06-04T11:59:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.electoral-reform.org.uk\/?p=7942"},"modified":"2024-06-04T12:59:58","modified_gmt":"2024-06-04T11:59:58","slug":"tv-debates-have-become-an-important-part-of-our-elections-lets-do-them-right","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/electoral-reform.org.uk\/tv-debates-have-become-an-important-part-of-our-elections-lets-do-them-right\/","title":{"rendered":"TV Debates have become an important part of our elections, let\u2019s do them right"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"row flexible-block\">\n<div class=\"col-xs-12 wysiwyg\">\n<p>The first election debate between Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer will be on our TV screens tonight, at 9pm on ITV. We\u2019ve already seen a debate between party leaders in Scotland (none of whom are actually standing in the general election) and more debates are coming up on the BBC and ITV.<\/p>\n<p>Televised election debates are a ubiquitous part of election campaigns now, so it\u2019s odd to think that the first televised debate was in just 2010. But as much as they have become a part of the normal political landscape, their existence at every election is a result of behind-the-scenes wrangling between party leaders and broadcasters.<\/p>\n<h3>When are the TV debates and how to watch them?<\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li>Monday 3 June, 9pm, STV\u00a0 &#8211; <a href=\"https:\/\/news.stv.tv\/politics\/scottish-party-leaders-face-tough-questioning-in-stv-election-debate\">Leaders of five Scottish political parties<\/a><\/li>\n<li>Tuesday 4 June, 9-10pm, ITV &#8211; Rishi Sunak and Sir Keir Starmer<\/li>\n<li>Friday 7 June, 7.30pm-9pm, BBC One\u00a0\u2013 Leading figures from seven political parties.<\/li>\n<li>Thursday 13 June, 8.30pm, ITV &#8211; Leading figures from seven political parties.<\/li>\n<li>Thursday 20 June, 8pm-10pm, BBC One\u00a0 \u2013 Leaders of the four biggest political parties.<\/li>\n<li>Wednesday 26 June, 9pm-10pm, BBC One\u00a0\u00a0\u2013 Rishi Sunak and Sir Keir Starmer.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h3>Do TV debates make a difference?<\/h3>\n<p>In 2017 we published <em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.electoral-reform.org.uk\/latest-news-and-research\/publications\/debating-the-tv-debates\/\">Debating the TV Debates<\/a>,<\/em> a study on the impact of the BBC\u2019s Question Time Leaders\u2019 special. The study, by the respected academics Professor Jay G Blumler, Professor Stephen Coleman and Dr Christopher Birchnall, found that a third of viewers thought that watching had helped them decide what party to vote for in the General Election\u00a0 \u2013 with young people particularly engaged.<\/p>\n<p>TV debates create opportunities for headlines and for winners and losers to emerge, such as <a href=\"http:\/\/news.bbc.co.uk\/1\/hi\/8621119.stm\">2010\u2019s Cleggmania<\/a>, 2015\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.lse.ac.uk\/polis\/2017\/04\/19\/how-were-the-tv-debates-organised-in-ge2015-and-what-was-their-impact-the-full-story\/\">debates around UKIP\u2019s inclusion<\/a>, accusations that <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/uk-politics-39633696\">Theresa May was dodging debates<\/a> in 2017 and the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.electoral-reform.org.uk\/its-time-we-stopped-arguing-about-the-tv-debates-and-guaranteed-real-choice-for-voters\/\">legal challenges of 2019<\/a> for who should be involved.<\/p>\n<p>Yet, there is a vital democratic aspect to TV debates too. For democracy to properly function it needs strong lines of communication between representative and represented. The age of mass media provides many such tools. Still, the TV debate is a direct opportunity for voters to compare and judge political leaders directly and for those same leaders to make a pitch directly to the public. Vitally, debates are a shared event for supporters of all parties, which is becoming a rarity in the age of hyper-targeted campaigns.<\/p>\n<p>Much of what we see and read about politics today is micro-targeted and atomised. But TV leaders\u2019 debates offer a rare shared event for supporters of all parties \u2013 one reason why the Electoral Reform Society (ERS) has\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.electoral-reform.org.uk\/latest-news-and-research\/publications\/debating-the-tv-debates\/\">long been broadly in favour<\/a>\u00a0of the broadcasts.<\/p>\n<h3>How could TV debates be improved?<\/h3>\n<p>If there is one thing that we can predict about TV debates, is the debates behind the scenes about who should get to take part. Each major party can threaten to drop out and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/election-2019-50596192\">dare the broadcaster to empty chair them<\/a> \u2013 in the knowledge that those broadcasters need to be impartial. Should organising debates be taken out of politicians\u2019 hands entirely?<\/p>\n<p>In Canada, an independent\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.canada.ca\/en\/democratic-institutions\/news\/2018\/10\/the-leaders-debates-commission.html\">Leaders\u2019 Debates Commission<\/a>\u00a0was set up in 2018 to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.electoral-reform.org.uk\/what-can-we-learn-from-canadas-leaders-debate-commission\/\">organise the debates for the 2019 federal election<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The Commission clearly set out and enforced the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.canada.ca\/en\/democratic-institutions\/news\/2018\/10\/the-leaders-debates-commission.html\">criteria<\/a>\u00a0for inclusion in TV debates and sought submissions from broadcasters who wished to organise TV debates. They also hosted roundtables with experts and practitioners to decide on their format, structure and style. We could go a step further and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.electoral-reform.org.uk\/the-tv-brexit-debate-tantrums-show-why-party-leaders-shouldnt-be-able-to-dictate-the-format\/\">get feedback from the public<\/a> on what formats they want to see.<\/p>\n<p>Who knows what will happen tonight and in the upcoming election debates. But we shouldn\u2019t have to reinvent the wheel for every election. TV debates are a major part of our elections, let\u2019s treat them that way.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The first election debate between Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer will be on our TV screens tonight, at 9pm on ITV. We\u2019ve already seen a debate between party leaders in Scotland (none of whom are actually standing in the general election) and more debates are coming up on the BBC and ITV. Televised election debates [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7943,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[128],"tags":[680,220],"class_list":["post-7942","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-informed-electorate","tag-ge2024","tag-tv-debates"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/electoral-reform.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7942","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/electoral-reform.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/electoral-reform.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/electoral-reform.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/electoral-reform.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7942"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/electoral-reform.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7942\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/electoral-reform.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7943"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/electoral-reform.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7942"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/electoral-reform.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7942"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/electoral-reform.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7942"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}