Media Standards Trust

It would be difficult to find a quieter way to go.

Last Friday Rhodri Morgan, Wales' First Minister, announced that he would step down in September 2009. It was reported in the South Wales Echo, the South Wales Evening Post, the Daily Post (Liverpool) and got a brief mention on Betsan Powys' blog (BBC Wales).

Nothing in the national press or on their websites. Nothing on Sky. Nothing on the BBC News Online (excepting Powys' blog and a short piece about the succession). Tumbleweed.

Now, you could try to explain this absence by arguing that September 2009 is a long way away, that the announcement was partly expected (though not its timing), and that Rhodri Morgan is not the most exciting figure. And, of course, it would be daft to expect anything approaching the fanfare attached to news about Tony Blair's corresponding announcement.

But wouldn't you have thought it was in the public interest at least to report it? Isn't the fact that the leader of the Welsh Assembly government is going and that a succession battle will now begin relevant not just to Wales but to UK politics and democracy?

Were Alex Salmond to announce he was stepping down it's hard to imagine the Scottish press ignoring it, or indeed the BBC.

And this isn't the only piece of Welsh political news that has gone AWOL. Last summer Morgan was hospitalized. Few outlets reported it. Immediately before that the successive attempts by different parties to form a coalition government were given scant coverage by the media.

Indeed there is increasing evidence to suggest that Wales is becoming a 'news blackspot'. That it is experiencing the spiral of decline in news reporting that people keep saying is threatened elsewhere.

The process goes something like this. Commercial organisations gradually cut back on their editorial commitment. The less an area is reported the less people assume there is to report. More reporters are pulled out. Finally only the BBC and local papers cover the region - and the BBC ghetto-izes much of its reporting into online pockets and blogs. At this point there's a good chance that, even if something happens that is important/newsworthy, it will go unreported or so under-reported that the vast majority of people will completely miss it.

Is Wales the first of many? Other areas now seem to be following the same path. Perhaps, if we think it's important that political news continues to get reported, we should look at what's happened in Wales and work out if we can do anything to reverse / stop it.