By Greg Fuller
The Big News in the UK for the last two weeks has been the same as pretty much everywhere else around the world: Financial panic! Market carnage! The abyss! Gemma strips off!
Okay, maybe that last one is only familiar to fans of the British tabloid The Sun, but they are the biggest group of "newspaper" readers in Britain.
Meanwhile, languishing on page two was one of the main events on the UK political calendar - the Conservative Party Conference. A few bits of news trickled out: there was the annual Conservative promise to freeze or abolish some unpopular tax (this year it was the council tax, last year an inheritance tax) and party leader David Cameron's promise to handle the current global crisis better than America has. But British media have been much more focused on politics across the pond.
Like the Democratic and Republican national conventions, the Labour, Tory, and Liberal Democrat conferences feature policy platforms, party luminaries, non-stop speech-a-thons, and a chance to hold the media captive for several days. Unlike their American counterparts, British party conferences are held annually and don't include the actual selection of a party leader.
The other big difference? Balloons.
U.S. political conventions are built around rabid partisans, confetti, cutting-edge stages, careful choreography, and balloons. In comparison, the British practice seems rather sober: policy-heavy speeches in front of a giant monochrome screen (blue for this week's conservative hoo-ha) in a conference hall packed with lots of people in suits, but very few balloons.
This could go a long way towards explaining why news of the Conservative conference appeared to be taking a backseat to the latest back-and-forth of the U.S. election. At one point, the Guardian's website gave priority to a video on Virginia swing voters and articles on Sarah Palin's debate expectations while the Telegraph's website had the latest on the insta-polls from the first presidential debate - but no front-page mention at all for the Conservatives.
Ultimately, it seems that despite the presence of some real home-grown news, imported American politics remains more newsworthy. This is probably due in part to the fact that the British people have a clear favorite in the race - according to a BBC World Service poll released in September, they prefer Barack Obama to John McCain by more than a six-to-one margin. Having a horse to root for may be helping spread the seduction of sports-like hourly poll releases and over-the-top theatrics across the Atlantic.
Even The Sun spares a few pages for its aptly-titled regular section on the U.S. election: "The Real American Idol."
Greg Fuller is a graduate student in the European Studies program at the Johns Hopkins University Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) Bologna Center in Italy. He is a half-British Californian.
Email the Author | Email This Post | Del.icio.us | Digg | Facebook
The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of the Johns Hopkins University.
Post a comment