BBC banned Tory Blackberrys on election night

... because the slick CCHQ machine was getting results to Conservative spokesmen before the BBC had them! The Guardian's Backbencher reports:

"The BBC never likes to be reminded that it breaks news as if it's a quarterly periodical rather than a 24-7 outlet, and because of this it rather churlishly did its best to upset the smooth running of the Thursday night Tory results machine. Allegedly. If you've watched the videos on Webcameron, you'll have seen Cameron et al waiting and then celebrating as the results came in (you haven't? Gosh. It's what West Wing would have looked like if George III hadn't lost America and Aaron Sorkin had been a Brit).

Well, off camera there wasn't much champagne action. Instead there were number crunchers and phone bashers extracting results from counts around the country and endeavouring to get them out to their front men sitting in television studios around London - ahead of the rest - to be able to put their gloss on it first. Impressive. Until the BBC made all politicians turn off their BlackBerrys. BBC sources said it was because of electronic interference ... Tory sources said it was because they were scooping them. Instead a Tory aide would receive an email, trot a print out of said results on to the set and hand it to their Tory. Even allowing for time wasted in the printing out and trotting in of results, you may remember that George Osborne still managed to broadcast some results on air before Dimbleby did."

As soon as results came in to Sheridan Westlake and co at CCHQ, they were innovatively syndicated via Twitter so mobile alerts and the front page of Conservatives.com were often beating the BBC and Sky.

Comments

[DavisFan]

Sheridan Westlake *is* the Conservative Party.

[Fugitive Ink]

George III didn't lose North America. Parliament did. There's a lesson in that somewhere.

[Ben P]

I enjoy BBC bashing as much as the next guy bu t this happens to fair enough on the part of the beeb. In the same way when you put your phone next to speakers it makes irritating noises the same is true of microphones. I really coudn't have put up with that for the entire night. If they CCHQ machine was that slick surely they could have negotiated instant internet access for the on-screen politicians?!?!

[Miranda]

I'm very pleased to say I had absolutly no need for the BBC on election night. I got all my results from blogs and the excellent service on Conservative Home. I even knew that Jeremy Vine was making a fool of himself and so could switch to an internet link if I choose to - I didn't.

Ban the BBC I say, who wants their sour faced , ill humoured, partisan commentary. Although Toynbee vs Littlejohn was worth watching on iplayer!!!!

[CCHQ spy (or am I?)]

Miranda, do you really think Conservative Home had all the info before the mainstream media? Or do you think they just copied all of the work compiled by Sheridan and the Conservative Research Department? That is after all the point of this whole article.

[Adam-]

I'm not so sure that the BBC's reasoning was totally unfounded. Several times I heard the distinctive GSM phone bz-bz-bz interference during the coverage, such that I spent a few minutes searching for a phone around my telly before realizing it was their end!

[Conservative Homer]

I remember reading somewhere a few years back the Blair government always had Sky News on because they found out about stuff before even the government knew! Often with breaking stories i find Sky is on the scene 5-10 minutes before the BBC, although to be frank i avoid watching any TV news.
I guess that's what comes from having to prepare the angle of every story to be suitably left wing though!

[Miranda]

CCHQ. I'm not sure of the point you are trying to make. Mine is that I as a layperson did not need the BBC, I was getting it from other media sources, who were as least as quick if not quicker. In case you missed it Conservative Home had a live blog where we all contributed data from numerous sources, including our friends at counts. And for some of the smaller parties we were getting information the BBC did not even broadcast!!

And what we did not get, was the miserable BBC bias, so all in all a much more pleasurable experience. I would suggest that this is the way of the future, and the BBC's way of doing it will be as dead as a doornail. And I for one will be more than happy at that.

[eugene]

Someone sell off the BBC please....so I can save my fee to help pay my VAT, council tax, booze tax, cigarette tax, insurance premium tax, bin tax, income tax, petrol tax, airport tax, road tax...anyone?....please.

[Mark Coventry]

BBC Local Radio coverage wasn't much better either. In my area BBC Radio Coventry & Warwickshire, had two "experts" on air with a presenter. One was a former Chief Exec of Coventry City Council, who actually gave a very reasoned and unbiased approach and commentary. Whilst the other who was a lecturer in Politics/International Studies, was nothing more than a Party Poltical Broadcast for the Lib-Dems. Not only is he a promenant Lib-Dem locally, but he was also a Candidate in the very elections he was commentating on!

At every stage he gave is opinion of PR and all the old tut you'd expect from a Lib-Dem. His party fielded 12 candidates out of a possible 18 and held just one seat (they have just the one seat on the City Council).

I rang the BBC Radio Station on election night to ask if this so called "expert" was on air as an independent observer or as a representative of the Lib-Dems. The producer could not answer the question.

This was the worst coverage I have ever heard from the BBC. Thankfully I enjoyed reading the many blogs via the web for my coverage. Sky is OK to a point, but I find the 15 min rolling news gets very boring after you've watched it for the 2nd or 3rd time.

[Editor]

Re The discussion between the new CCHQ Spy and Miranda: ConservativeHome benefited enormously from being fed news from CCHQ. Our election nights coverage wouldn't have been half as good if we hadn't had regular emails from CCHQ that were distributed to us and other media organisations. I would add, however, that we had our own sources and based in CCHQ that night we certainly had some tips before the party machine and shared that intelligence with them. Our 'calling London for Boris' was completely our own judgment and based on our own contacts.