You know podcasting has now definitely entered the mainstream when two politicians – one a Prime Minister no less, and both leaders of their parties and members of the government – use the medium in conjunction with two national newspapers to convey particular messages to voters in the UK.
Yesterday, Prime Minister Tony Blair was interviewed by The Sun newspaper in that paper’s first podcast. He uses the medium to talk about cleaning up anti-social behaviour in towns and cities (a hot political issue in the UK at the moment).
On Tuesday, new Conservative Party leader David Cameron became the first UK political party leader to record a podcast by using The Daily Telegraph‘s regular podcast service (which the paper launched in November) to speak about broader political issues and attacked Blair’s anti-social behaviour plans. Unlike Blair’s podcast, Cameron’s was not an interview – he simply talked during a seven-minute segment in conversational style.
Initial impressions – Blair’s interview doesn’t sound that different to the type of scripted interview you’d hear on the radio. In contrast, Cameron’s delivery sounded spontaneous and informal.
A very interesting development in communication in UK politics.
Shel and I will be talking about these podcasts from the communication perspective in today’s edition of For Immediate Release: The Hobson & Holtz Report podcast, which we’ll be recording this evening Amsterdam time.
[Update] In a comment to this post, Niall Cook points out that the first leader of a UK political party to do a podcast was, in fact, Charles Kennedy of the Liberal Democrats. Kennedy did six podcasts in April and May 2005 – that’s eight months ago – during the UK general election campaign.
So much for journalistic fact-checking – the Telegraph says quite clearly in its podcast that Cameron is the first party leader to do a podcast. Clearly not so.
Neville, I pride myself in having no particular political affiliation, but I do feel the need to stick up for the recently-ousted leader of the Liberal Democrats, Charles Kennedy, on this issue (unlike many of his colleagues, quite clearly).
You see, Charles Kennedy was podcasting back in May last year. His campaign site is no longer available, but it still appears in Google’s search results (redirecting to the party home page) and the feed is still there as evidence.
So, like everything else that comes from the Lib Dems, nobody seems to have noticed…
Interesting, Niall, thanks. So Charles Kennedy as a party leader was the first to do a podcast. So much for believing what you read in the newspapers 😉
I found all the podcasts you mention, from April and May 2005, at Podcasting News –
http://www.podcastingnews.com/details/www.kennedycampaign.org/wp-content/kennedycampaignpodcast.xml/view.htm
Six MP3 files, all downloadable.
I wonder why the Telegraph didn’t know about this, ie, they said Cameron is the first party leader to do a podcast. Can’t be political bias, surely not 🙂
I’m sure you must have also seen that Loic Le Meur carried out a video podcast interview of French Interior Minister and Presidential hopeful Nicolas Sarkozy in December.
– http://www.loiclemeur.com/france/2005/12/nicolas_sarkozy_1.html
In the race to be first, the truth rarely matters.
Indeed, Niall.
Stuart, thanks for pointing that one out. I’d read Loic’s English-language post when he posted the interview:
http://www.loiclemeur.com/english/2005/12/nicolas_sarkozy.html
Also, Business Week feature about it:
http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/dec2005/nf20051227_3765_db039.htm
Clearly a trend for European politicians. In the UK and France at least. Who’s next?
UK, la politica scopre il podcasting
A distanza di un giorno l’uno dall’altro David Cameron, leader del Conservative Party inglese, e Tony Blair, premier britannico e leader del Labour Party, hanno accettato di registrare un podcast e di parlare dei temi caldi della politica inglese. …