News ‘made in Wales, for Wales’ is ‘vital’ due to Brexit

Oh dear, oh dear, no wonder Wales is swirling down the pan So "“Plaid Cymru hopes that we can secure the support of the majority of parties in the Assembly in favour of taking the first steps towards putting the future of Welsh broadcasting in our hands” does it? Right.... "Plaid Cymru hopes...." No, we all hope. The point of Plaid is action. I want to know what actual and effective steps Plaid is going to take to do this. SG must give me more than hope. No longer good enough to be without the plan of action "that we can secure the support of the majority of parties in the Assembly" . Look, Sian Gwenllian, politics is a fairly rough business. Labour in Wales is a tough self-interested clique which has a lot of patronage, plenty of academics and lots and lots of tame votes. That is why Labour can do what it does and why Wales has poor broadcasting. Please tell me, Sian, is the clique to which you belong tough? Do you have a lot of patronage? On this evidence Plaid is neither. Yes we know Plaid has academics - and only one vote-getter, McEvoy, the man you are trying to throw out. Has Plaid got lots and lots of loyal votes, or tame ones? No. Plaid has been in a Welsh Assembly for a whole generation now and still just about gets double figures in the national vote. No wonder you are reduced to hoping. Plaid is now now better than the Liberal Democrats. OK, suppose I'm wrong, and you can make ("make" not "hope that") Labour and the Tories do the right thing and establish Welsh Broadcasting properly. "take the first steps towards...." Please, can't you do better than this? Henry V did not say "let us take the first steps to the breach, dear friends!" "Nor do I think that any other nation than this of Wales, nor any other language, whatever may hereafter come to pass, shall on the day of severe examination before the Supreme Judge, take the first steps to answer for this corner of the earth." is not how we remember the Old Man of Pencader, is it? Yet again a elected member of Plaid Cymru gets space in Nation.cymru only to reveal an uncomfortable truth. They are not, as a group, the people who are going to save Wales from the slide over the cliff proposed by a group of discontented English, the "Daily Mail" and (amazingly) enough Welsh voters to scare the timorous lot who sit in the Welsh Assembly.

Da rhoi pwysedd ar San Steffan yn hyn o beth. Ond diwedd y gân, mae angen arnom ysgwyddo cyfrifoldeb a gwneud y pethau hyn ein hunain heb y Wladwriaeth. A symud oddi wrth syniadau dibyniaeth y Blaid Lafur gydag ysbryd anorchfygol y tywysogion Cymreig a fu. It’s good to put pressure in Westminster in this sort of thing. But at the end of the day we have to accept responsibility and do these things ourselves without the State. And move away from Labour’s dependency-based ideas with the unconquerable spirit if the Welsh princes which were.

I'd agree with Benjiman. We can create our own media, this was a great deal harder in the past, but it is one of the few things that the digital revolution has improved. This site itself is a sign that change like this is possible. But a large part of the problem is not only the London-centric focus it is the lack of diversity of opinion in the mainstream media an with our mainstream political parties. There little to chose between the parties and their offerings and none have the guts to promote independence as a primary, immediate and achievable aim. They either don't wish independence, think we are too small to stand on our own, or think we are not ready to govern ourselves. Because they all avoid this glaring option which would give Wales the tools and opportunity to control her future they all end up regurgitating the same plans which originate across the border or try and fight over the scraps of power which have been permitted. What we need to do first is to create the content (the desire for a different vision), then we can create the voice, then the media will follow.

I agree with what's in this article, but I'm afraid I also agree with Mr Edwards: the whole tone and timidity of Plaid is getting them - and more importantly, Wales - nowhere. Up here in Arfon we're hanging on by the skin of our teeth, and the reason because Plaid are timid, and in part because they waffle with remote and often mandarin language about community socialism and stuff like that (see their latest pamphlet that Leanne is trailing around Wales) without actually touching the live issues. They're so afraid of populism (a dirty works for them) that they've forgotten that there's such a thing as a centre left nationalist populism that can be made to work for Plaid and Wales. You don't need to be a fan of McEvoy (and I'm not especially) to see that he wins votes because he takes the fight to Labour. Who - honestly - in Plaid can be said to have done that in the last 10 years?

Even if the only thing that could be achieved by implementing the above would be to not have listen to endless news about America, then it would be worth it just for that.

A colonialist mushroom plot.kept in the dark and waiting to be consumed by england.

I went to a recent meeting in Cardigan when Leanne gave a brief introduction to Plaid's recently launched pamphlet. Questions were then invited and were answered by Leanne and Ben Lake. The questions were mild and innocent in their content. Nothing controversial. Parchus iawn. It could well have been a chapel meeting. Nobody asked about the pamphlet until it was my turn. I had a hard copy in my hand. This booklet was launched with much aplomb at the St David's Hotel in the Bay the day before Neil McEvoy was expelled. Who thought that one out I thought. I asked quite innocently how many people in the room had read the contents either online or the hard copy. The response was suitably muted. I suggested that what Plaid needed was to take on Labour and their appalling record of Government, along with drawing out a simple charter outlining the way forward towards Independence. The reply was that Plaid must stress the positives outlined in the pamphlet. I thought to myself, where was Neil McEvoy? But I forgot, he's not a member of the Plaid establishment in the Bay. I took a non-member friend with me to the meeting. We went for a pint and I asked him what he thought. He wouldn't go again, he said. Not enough plain-speaking; too much waffle. Nough said!

ITV Wales calls it's Sharp End programme it's 'flagship' ! I still force myself to watch it just in case something happens. Adam Price was pretty solid on it a few weeks ago but the rest of them ? Third rate rubbish the lot of them.

I suppose that while Wales is still an oversized English county, Plaid Cymru have no choice but to think of devolved broadcasting as a potential means of promoting a rational public debate on how to get the best out of Brexit. But hopefully they are aware that broadcasting has bigger implications, and bigger potential values, than that.This is a huge issue, and the campaign to win it needs real passion. I can see hints of this in Sian Gwenllian's article, but (as other contributors have indicated) Plaid must avoid treading too carefully; the polls show that this isn't a potential vote-loser.

Hmmm...a bit ambivalent on all this. I am of the opinion that 'no news is good news'. Thank God there is very little that goes on in Wales that can be classed as 'newsworthy' and that to me is good. Reporting 'news' and broadcasting is also very expensive and there are only one or two journalists (with any ambition or talent) working in Wales reporting the mostly minor, in the worldwide scheme of things, news events that do occur. There are no Welsh Citizen Kanes or Welsh Rupert Murdochs willing to pay for more. Of course there are crimes, injustices, corruption and accidents happening every day but this is covered more or less by the existing broadcasters. Where I suppose there is a gap is in the Media influencers and commentariat (about fifty people in the whole of Wales!) and in digging for dirt long term investigative journalism (the most expensive form!). Devolving broadcasting to the Welsh Government is not going to improve the quality, volume or content of news or even its focus on Welsh matters (although it should be done obviously if only to prevent the sainted Elfed Wyn Jones from going without food for another week). The only media outlets that will provide 'a voice for the people' are websites like this one at Nation.cymru, Golwg 360 and similar. This is where the future is and where funding and investment should go (although I sometimes wonder what Golwg have done with the £100K they got from WG!).