St David’s Week and the Welsh media

As the media including most of what’s left of it in Wales continues to wade through the entrails of the Eastleigh By-election and make Mystic Meg style predictions about what it all means for the UK Coalition I thought it was worth reflecting on the week in Wales.

This week was of course the once a year opportunity to promote and celebrate all things welsh ending with St David’s Day on Friday and it’s a sad reflection when so little Welsh media coverage was given to what happened this week.

We all knew about the unveiling of the Richard Burton star on the Walk of Fame in Hollywood and the visit of the Queen, Prince Charles and Camillla to Wales, but how many people in Wales knew that First Minister Carwyn Jones was in Brussels and Barcelona during the week promoting Wales and St David’s Day or that Edwina Hart was piggybacking the Richard Burton star unveiling by travelling to Silicon Valley to promote Welsh business interests in California this week or that  Huw Lewis was in China promoting an exhibition on Wales from the National Museum of Wales in Chongqing province. 

Yes the Welsh Government has been slow taking these trips in the past and the opposition is right to ask for proof that these aren’t just jollies for the Minister’s concerned, but surely they were worth a passing mentioning especially this week of all weeks. Perhaps Carwyn and his colleagues only have themselves to blame as the only time they seem to want publicity these days is to blow raspberries at the UK Coalition rather than doing their jobs.

But Ministerial visits abroad weren’t alone in not attracting the Welsh media’s attention as the major St David’s Day parade in Cardiff or any of the other St David’s Day parades across Wales hardly warranted a mention on the main BBC Wales or ITV Wales evening news on Friday – would the Irish media fail to mention the parade in Dublin on St Patrick's Day?

Added to that the annual Welsh food fair in London for Welsh food producers a vitally important part of the Welsh economy wasn't mentioned after bad unemployment figures last month and the hundreds of school Eisteddfod that might make the local press in a supplement next week and you get a stark picture of priorities.

But there was some better news David Cornock wrote his usual piece on the St David's Day debate in Westminster and even the Blarite think tank Progress had a range of articles to coincide with St David’s Day, so people outside Wales obviously get the significance, but the Welsh TV offerings for 1st March on all channels were poor as National Left wrote and you wonder how hard it would be for the BBC, ITV and S4C to arrange a 1000 voices concert or show a Welsh film on their channels for one day a year?

All in all you would have struggled to differentiate this week from any other if you relied on the media and weren't in a village, town or city that made the effort to promote and celebrate St David’s Day, it’s yet another reason why the well documented problems with the welsh media needs to be addressed.

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