In an analysis piece on the Lib Dem Conference at the end of the week, BBC political writer Nick Assinder wrote “After a conference week dominated by chatter over his leadership, Sir Menzies Campbell needed to meet his critics…” Later in the piece he talks of a week “which was overshadowed by leadership talk”.

How does Mr Assinder justify the statement that the week was “dominated by chatter over his Leadership”?

In what sense was the week dominated by this question?

Was it one of the topics under discussion within the formal conference? Well, there were about 50 motions, debates and other sessions during the week, not one of which was about the future of the Leadership.

On the fringe, there were I believe more than 200 fringe meetings held - again, not a single one was about the future of the party’s leader.

Mr Assinder and perhaps some others might believe that this ought to have been an issue, but so far, even if that is so, it seems more justified in “elephant in the room” status, than “dominating” the conference.

Was this issue discussed informally? Well, if I recall correctly one of the several questions that Ming was asked in a Q&A session on Monday was about leadership. That meant it was indeed the topic for perhaps 5 minutes on one day. But that is hardly “dominating” the discussion - indeed by that measure a vast number of other questions “dominated” the week far more - for example the failings of the Environment Agency over flooding, or the way in which the Arab League should be represented in future negotiations about the Israel-Palestine issue, both of which were discussed for considerably longer (to pick a couple of examples that I happened to be in the hall for).

I’m sure that something similar to this question was asked a few times among the many thousands of questions asked at fringe meetings. But as a percentage of the whole discussions - 1%, 2%, perhaps?

Well was this issue being discussed over breakfast or at the bar by party members, then? Well, obviously I can only speak for those I ran into, but from my observation the major topics at breakfast seemed to be running through local campaigning issues from wherever representatives were from, and a quick canter through whatever was on the conference agenda that morning, combined with saying which lunchtime fringes people planned to go to. And at the bar in the evening, discussion mostly seemed to be about what had happened in the conference that day, and a look forward to tomorrow, but with conversation “dominated”, unsurprisingly, by a large range of issues wholly unrelated to the conference or the Liberal Democrats (Lib Dems are not that weird - they do talk about normal things too when in the bar).

So in what sense is the claim that conference was “dominated” by Leadership discussion justified?

Well, there were of course one group of people present in Brighton who were very interested indeed in this question. They, of course, are the media. We know they are interested in it, because they wrote and spoke about it an awful lot. But does this justify saying “conference was dominated” by this issue - because perhaps 2 or 3% of the people present, who were not even party members, were obsessed with it? This does seem to justify saying that “reporting of the conference has been dominated” by this issue - but that of course is really rather a different thing.

If that is really the story that Mr Assinder wants to write, then he should say that - that the reporting was dominated by this question. Of course that’s up to him and his editors - but it does seem to me quite odd for a correspondent to be more interested in reporting how others are reporting an event, than reporting the event itself. Surely the BBC’s mission to explain public events is normally more appropriately met by outlining the reality of what is happening within a political party, than by reporting how others are reporting it. (Indeed I would go further and say that personally I would have thought that the public interest is rather more in what ideas a party is proposing - whether taxes should be structured in a different way, or we should be intervening in Darfur, say - than even what party members think about gossip about their Leader.)

But in any case I do think that if a BBC correspondent makes a claim, then they ought to be able to justify it. I’ve tried to set out why I think that claim is not justified, and I’d very much like to hear from Mr Assinder or anyone else, why they think this particular statement does add up. I recognise that I am rather picking on his statement of this, when many other journalists have said similar things over the last week, but it is after all for its objectivity and well-informed balance that people come to the BBC. I have tried to set out in factual terms why I think this is not a justified statement, and I’d very much like to hear the case, based on the facts, for why it is.