We've brought red lines out on the road again this week. We're at the Imagine Festival in the

Accidental Theatre on Belfast's Shaftesbury Square, to be precise, and we're here to discuss

the challenges of political journalism in 2023. How has the reporting of politics changed over the years?

What kind of relationships do political journalists have with politicians and political parties?

And has the rise of populism in a landscape now dominated by social media change the rules forever, for everyone?

With me around the table today are three people well qualified to contribute to the discussion, BBC Northern Ireland political correspondent, Gareth Gordon,

the Belfast Telegraph's political

editor, Suzanne Breen, and BBC NI's former political editor, Mark Devonport. And we've been joined by a

small but perfectly formed audience who'll get a chance to put a few questions of their own to our

panelists a little later in proceeding. So welcome to you all.

Suzanne, the four of us up here on the stage came to work full-time in political journalism after serving our time in general news and current affairs.

What's your definition of political journalism?

It's just a journalist who covers politics.

I don't see that there is any specific brand of political journalism.

I don't think people who are doing journalist courses decide, and I don't think they should,

I'm going to be a political journalist.

The aim is just to kind of break news, to explain, to communicate, to hold party account.

And that doesn't matter whether your field, your speciality is politics, is health,

is education, is general news, is crime, is security.

How to do the job and do the job well is exactly the same, except we are swimming in a sea of politicians as opposed to dealing with nurses, doctors, patients.

So I don't think it should be put up there in a pedestal, that it's different or we're better or more sophisticated than journalists covering everything, general news reporters or covering other specialist

fields.

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