Jacob Leverett's diary

So, as you can see from the lateest bumper 16 page first in a series edition of Pugwash News, elections are upon us.

I’m not going to preach to you about why you should get involved, I am going to discuss the role of UPSU media.  News, current affairs and anything timely comes under my job description, which means the elections and particularly how the printed and online media cover them becomes my responsibility. This on one hand means that I have news to write on without looking too far, which has its benefits considering the exams, deadlines and whatever else is being demanded of me by my degree. However,  a whole new dilemma appears when covering elections. One that has got me slightly stumped and baffled: should we cover elections? How do we cover them fairly and without showing bias or appearing to show bias?

The BBC and the mainstream press have a similar dilemma when it comes to general elections. When it comes to general elections the BBC have a responsibility to cover the current government and the official opposition along with Liberal Democrats in equal measures. This works fine, however with the UPSU sabbatical elections the number of candidates can be huge, and to mention everyone would involve having a paper four times the size and me having the long overdue heart attack.

So where do we go? Do we only report on candidates doing interesting things? But then who defines interesting?

We could just ignore the whole process but that would then fail my primary aim, which is to try and educate and stimulate debate amongst you our readers.

I’m lost and my brain hurts, am I over reacting? Is this just a huge collection of pig laws or do I have reason to fret?