• Share on Facebook
  • Share on Facebook
  • Share on Linkedin
  • Share by email
  • Share on Facebook
  • Share on Facebook
  • Share on Linkedin
  • Share by email

On Monday last week The Guardian published a succinct round-up of media coverage of the election ? and there were few surprises. 1,929 stories were surveyed, and of these, only 0.2% related to the arts and culture.
Perhaps we should take heart; at least that was twice as much coverage as housing and e-commerce, each of which scored a mere 0.1% of all coverage. Compare this with a massive 37.2% of all coverage which has been given to the election process itself, and a further 5.7% relating to politicians? conduct, and it is surely self-evident that being newsworthy has little to do with being important.

Even if we are willing to concede that the Great British Public is generally indifferent to the arts, the same could hardly be said of housing. Even after the hard lessons learned in the property crash of the 1990s the chattering classes are still obsessed with the value of their properties, and at the other end of the economic spectrum, urban regeneration and tackling homelessness are at the top of almost every public policy hit-list across the country. Yet housing is relegated to the same pile of ?non-issues? as the arts, tackled in the small-print of party manifestos and effectively ignored by the mass media.

Let?s just suppose for one moment though, that the arts were top of the political and media agenda for this election. What sort of coverage would they get? Accusations of elitism being flung at any politician who dares to mention that he thinks opera should be properly funded? Internal splits within the parties between the supporters of ?institutional? arts and supporters of ?grass roots? arts? Statistics published to show how many people have had their lives changed by the arts ? and then different statistics showing how far short we have fallen in comparison with other countries? Tabloid stories of MPs attending performances where actors take their clothes off? Maybe, just for once, it?s better to sit in the wings out of the spotlight until the big day is over, grateful that the arts aren?t being used as a political football to win over the floating voter. It?s more difficult to be the subject of broken elections promises if no promises have been made in the first place.