Friday, March 1, 2013

Channel Four News - the response to my complaint

Dear Mr Nevols,

Thank you for contacting Channel 4 Viewer Enquiries regarding CHANNEL 4 NEWS.

We are sorry to hear that you feel the timing of this report was ill-timed, we have passed your concerns onto our news editors. Please be assured your complaint has been logged and noted for the information of those responsible for our programming.

Thank you again for taking the time to contact us. We appreciate all feedback from our viewers; complimentary or otherwise.

Regards,
Steve Reynolds
Channel 4 Viewer Enquiries

A rather bland and standard response – I doubt my comments will have been ‘noted’ by anyone. However I won’t of course be taking the complaint any further.

Ironically, if it had been the intention of Channel 4 News to help the Conservative campaign in Eastleigh, it spectacularly backfired – the consequences fuelled the ‘anti-politician’ voters into the arms of UKIP and pushed the Tories into third place.

In my comments to various articles on the Conservative Home forum, I had speculated that the media would have a story on hold which will be carefully released at the right time to wrongfoot the Liberal Democrats. This proved to be the case. I felt it was disappointing that we had been so ill-prepared for this – if I could see it coming, why did no-one else? The lesson is that we need to brush up our technique for responding to such media explosions.

Fortunately, despite this and the usual barrage from the right wing newspapers, our party’s resilience and hard working held on for a great victory. I am proud to have played my own very small part in this (two days down there) and the fact that the entire party rallied around at its moment of need.

Congratulations to Mike Thornton and everyone in the Eastleigh Liberal Democrats.

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