“Mixed messages” Lampost in Leith, Edinburgh

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Reporting the election 2005
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Reporting the election 2005

Prominent young journalists from all over the world travelled to the UK to report on the 2005 British General Election in May. They shadowed parliamentary candidates and reported on their experiences in the media in their home country. Find out more about the experience of the journalists involved by reading their testimonials below.

‘Value for money’
Leonardo Valero (Mexico)
An hour on any national tv channel, will be enough for you to distinguish the candidates main messages.A single day of these tv ads amounts to the complete budget that a party is allowed to expend in a British constituency for the whole campaign.
Leonardo was shadowing Iain Luke, Labour candidate for Dundee East

‘Face-to-face’
Clio Van Cauter (Belgium)
The difficulty of the campaign in Orkney and Shetland is mainly due to the fact that if you want to reach the population you need to travel to different islands. It would be so much easier for Alistair Carmichael to just send some Libdem voluntary helpers but he refuses to. He wants to be the one who explains his policy to the inhabitants of these islands. In Belgium it’s rare to actually have a candidate visiting you.
Clio was shadowing Alistair Carmichael, Liberal Democrat candidate for Orkney & Shetland

‘Local issues’
Sokol Shameti (Albania)
I followed him on the board of a traditional and old bus, running around the areas of the markets and the countryside of its constituency. “If you go out shaking hands with people, you learn that they care more about their water taxes than the Henry’s II conquests”, he told me.
Sokol was shadowing Basil McCrea, Ulster Unionist Party candidate for Lagan Valley

Abid Hassan (Iraq)
In a village called Welden Bay when I knocked on a door of a family a woman of about 50 years appeared I tried to give her the Labour Leaflets; but she refused to take it and said “I will not vote for the Labour Party, nor for Tony Blair because of his war against Iraq”, I replied to her that “I am Iraqi and what happened in Iraq has many positive points, as you see today we are free, we have internet, mobile phone, free media and elected parliament and government, all these were banned before” and I added “Do you want Iraqis to be at the hard circumstances forever?” Then she gazed at me surprisingly with a wide smile and she took the leaflet from my hand calmly closing the door.
Abid was shadowing Derek Wyatt, Labour candidate for Sittingbourne & Sheppey

Marek Chorvatovi (Slovakia)
Nationalists in Slovakia have problems formulating coherent sentences, and without good cause they attack members of ethnic minorities.

Plaid Cymru is not a party which I would choose as a voter. Yet as a journalist I have no other choice than to respect it. And as a Slovak I can only silently envy this form of civilized nationalism.
Marek was shadowing Elfyn Llwyd, Plaid Cymru candidate for Meirionnyd Nant Conwy

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