Policy Research Media Morhamburn

A very bright young reporter from the Today Programme was sent to join us at Radio Leeds. She, like I, wasn’t long out of training though hers was very much the BBC Fast Track and mine was not.

Her mission was to find a series of stories from West Yorkshire that reflected what was going on that might also deal with a few complaints that the London-based flagship radio programme of the BBC was failing to reflect the “Regions”.

I can’t remember her name but I know she was very cheerful and friendly and everyone liked her and wanted to help. We shared some of our really good ideas for features based around issues which were uppermost in the minds of the people of Leeds, Bradford, Wakefield, Huddersfield, Halifax and the bits in between.

I vaguely remember she sent down a story to her editors on the legacy of a Leeds asbestos factory. I’m pretty sure there was one about new electronics companies springing up somewhere. They were good stories. They never saw the light of broadcast day.

On her third day she asked the Radio Leeds News Editor what he thought she was doing wrong. What did he think that London wanted to hear?

His weary response was simple: “Cloth caps and ferrets.”

Reports from West Yorkshire in the coming days included one on dark Satanic textiles mills and another on pigeon fanciers. They were broadcast with a knowing nod by the presenters to their obvious genuine portrayal of life in the North.

I have been reminded of this incident many times in the years since, not least in recent days reading and watching the coverage of Kenny MacAskill’s decisions to allow the man blamed for the Lockerbie atrocity to go home to die.

So much of the coverage has been by London-based reporters and columnists expressing horror that legislation had somehow been passed without anyone noticing (I assume that was the Scotland Act) that ceded power on really important things to a Government that isn’t very important and isn’t in London. Amidst the criticism of the decision one also could feel the anguish of people whose noses had been put solidly out of joint by the inability of the Scots to fit in with their required dependence stereotype.

Yesterday as the world’s media gathered at Holyrood for the debate on the Justice Secretary’s decision, I was pretty content that we’d got past that stuff about “who do they think they are” and back to the issue of “compassion: right or wrong”. It was also rather heartening walking to work beside the Parliament to know that the place that is the centre of so many of our lives here, had also become the centre of the global news agenda.

Later in the day I was heading in for a meeting with Parliament’s Events people shortly before the vote on the decision was due. There was a queue to go through security. I got chatting to a woman from the south of England. I was a bit surprised when she asked what was going on with all these people. I explained and suggested that she might find it difficult to get a place in the public gallery for a while and there were no tours on a parliamentary working day. My centre of the media universe bubble was burst by her response:

“Oh I’m not interested in that. It’s just that I’ve been on a lovely walking tour and I’m hoping there’s a public loo on the other side of these security people.”