News & Press An election is no laughing matter 7th April 2005, The Scotsman AS THE campaign buses head around the country and election saturation kicks in, many will be crying out for some light relief. Except it won’t come. At least not on the telly. Strangely the existing legislation and guidelines means that while the public can be entertained by the likes of Bremner, Bird and Fortune throughout the year it is not acceptable to air their views once an election is called. The broadcasters have it tough. The BBC’s Charter and Agreement sets out certain principles, which are central to its coverage of politics. It requires programmes to contain comprehensive, authoritative and impartial coverage of news and current affairs in the United Kingdom and throughout the world to support fair and informed debate at local, regional and national levels. It requires the BBC to treat controversial subjects with "due accuracy and impartiality", both in the Corporation’s news services and in the more general field of programmes dealing with matters of public policy or of political or industrial controversy. In practice this means that the BBC aims, over time, to give due prominence to all the main strands of argument and to all the main parties. In a post Hutton BBC, it is hard but to draw the conclusion that the corporation will go out of its way to avoid being embroiled in a political storm during an election. But the newspaper industry is not dominated by such questions of partiality. On the day of the 1992 general election, the Sun’s front page carried a picture of the then Labour leader Neil Kinnock as a light bulb with the headline "If Neil Kinnock wins, will the last person to leave Britain please turn out the lights?" When John Major won, the newspaper gloated it was the Sun "wot won it". But the newspaper industry doesn’t have it all its own way. Despite the underlying principles of freedom of expression coming to the fore, there are still some restrictions on the media at election time. t Advertising restrictions mean a paper can’t take an advertisement supporting a particular candidate placed by anyone other than the candidate or his agent. So supporters of a particular candidate cannot incur expense to promote their candidate’s chances. Nor can supporters incur expense by encouraging voters not to vote for a particular candidate. Advertisements for political parties rather than individuals are allowed, but the real problem for newspapers is that there is a criminal sanction if they affect the return of a candidate by publishing any false statement of fact in relation to the candidate’s personal character or conduct, unless there are reasonable grounds for believing it to be true. So don’t expect to see too many kiss-and-tell stories about our MPs in the build up to 5 May. Let’s stick to policy.