Where the h*** is Medway?
If you were a journalist in 2018 when Mark Reckless gave up his Conservative Rochester and Strood seat to re-run for the seat as a UKIP MP, you would probably have asked the same question.
At least, that’s what Laura’s colleagues at Channel 5 did on that fateful day, when all of a sudden, the faraway lands of Medway (32 miles from Channel 5’s newsroom, in fact) were the talk of the town.
In her guest-appearance for The Political Medway, an independent, non-partisan website covering politics within Medway, Laura makes the argument that the limited access (and thus, dire lack of diversity) in the media not only looks bad – it keeps the media from properly reporting to the people it serves.
Journalism deserves more diverse storytellers because we owe it to the audiences we serve. We have to do better. So does politics. To echo Isabel Hardman’s words again, journalism, councils and Parliament “deserve to be fed by networks from across society, not just those connected to privilege” or London.
Laura Garcia
PressPad Co-Founder