How far is the Lib Dems' lack of media coverage our own fault?

Over on Liberal Democrat Voice Leicestershire's own Mathew Hulbert asks how we Liberal Democrats can improve our media coverage.

In this post, he quotes a former lobby correspondent who suggests it is not all down to media bias. 

Ian Silvera says (among other things):

Spoke to upwards of 10 lobby journalists at the Reform Conference. Sounds like Lib Dems have a media crisis.

Overriding sentiment is that hacks and editors think Lib Dem Conf will be a waste of time, the party isn’t engaging on the big issues and it’s not as reactive as it used to be.

The sentiment seems to be one of frustration from political journalists, claiming that they would often get lots of incoming from the Lib Dems for media team in the past around opportunistic events and they felt this type of engagement has dropped off somewhat.

Some left-leaning media have criticised UK journalism’s embrace of Reform, but the party has put great effort and resource into its Monday press briefings during the Summer, while the Lib Dems haven’t offered them anything similar.

Perhaps the time has come to think about moving on from our strategy of treating national politics as a collection of by-elections? 

Three bullet points and a reminder that Labour can't win here don't constitute a programme for government. And this approach may also explain why we seem to be abstaining on a surprising number of issues.