MPs Slam Local Council Newspaper
h&f news comes under fire, council "will consider" selling it
Hammersmith and Fulham Council came in for a stinging attack at the House of Commons on Tuesday (October 27) during a select committee hearing on 'The future for local and regional media'.
During the meeting, MPs from all parties quizzed three local authority representatives, including H&F's Cllr Mark Loveday, about the effects of their free council publications on privately owned local newspapers in their areas. The MPs expressed particular concern about Hammersmith and Fulham's fortnightly publication.
Holding up a copy of h&f news, Conservative MP Philip Davies said it wasn't clear that it was a council publication at all and demanded to know why it wasn't written in large letters across the front page that the paper was “council propaganda, so that your residents know what it is they're reading. I'm asking you to make it abundantly clear to your residents that this is a council publication,” he said.
“This is just positive spin. This is, let's face it, this is council propaganda masquerading as an independent newspaper. There's nothing here, to the casual reader, that would think that this had anything to do with a council publication. Why aren't you up front about what this is?” added Davies.
In a similar attack, Labour MP Rosemary McKenna described h&f news as "a pretend newspaper", and turning to an article on business rates said: “If you look at your newspaper, on page 5, there's a clear attack on the Government. That's not an impartial article. People looking at that are assuming that that's been written by a local editor taking a stand, an objective stand, but it's anything but.”
Cllr Loveday said borough residents were well aware that h&f news was a council publication: “In terms of residents knowing that this is a council newspaper, my simple answer is that we do test this and that the latest survey showed that 80% of residents said it was clearly a council newspaper. People are aware of that,” he said.
One panel member pointed to the 'Letters to the Editor' section and suggested the Council wouldn't want to publish any criticism of themselves in their own letters page. Cllr Loveday responded: “We do cover critical letters, they do appear in the letters page.”
But local residents campaigning against the Goldhawk Block were dismayed earlier this year when a letter they submitted to h&f news failed to appear in print. A Council spokesperson said at the time: "h&f news can confirm that it has received this letter and welcomes all of its readers' views. The paper will treat this letter like any other."
The demise of local newspapers and the rise of council freesheets has led to fears of an erosion of democracy at local level. “Surely it's essential in a successful democracy for people in authority to be held to account. Isn't it amazing that you only communicate with your residents all the good things that the Council is doing?” asked Philip Davies.
Defending Hammersmith and Fulham Council's publication, Cllr Loveday answered: “The purpose of the newspaper, it's a vehicle to communicate with residents and necessarily, we are going to communicate the messages that we need to communicate. It is a communications-driven operation rather than us setting out to produce a democratic document.”
The select committee meeting comes amid warnings that the removal of statutory notices from local titles could lead to the closure of some newspapers. In a debate in Westminster in July, MPs warned that the loss of advertising revenue to council publications was also threatening to undermine the role of the local press and could lead to some parts of the country being without any local newspaper at all.
At the Tuesday meeting, Liberal Democrat MP Adrian Sanders said local newspapers were particularly worried about councils taking away from them the things that used to go in the local titles, such as planning notices and other official notices. He described Hammersmith and Fulham as “the communist council that believes in the state ownership of newspapers and who's putting the private sector out of business”.
Confirming that Hammersmith and Fulham placed the bulk of their planning notices in their in-house paper, Cllr Loveday responded: “I welcome your comment about communism. It's a rare day when Hammersmith and Fulham is outflanked on the right. We consider ourselves pragmatic about this. Is it proper for us to be subsidising the shareholders of Trinity Mirror to the extent that we have been or are we doing better to go out there and grab as much of help to alleviate the burden on local taxpayers as we can? We've taken the second route.”
There was also concern that h&f news was in competition with local newspapers for private sector advertising revenue. “You must be taking money away from existing publications,” said one of the MPs on the panel.
But Cllr Loveday dismissed the suggestion, saying local papers in Hammersmith and Fulham were 'wraparound' versions of other newspapers (i.e. four of five pages of local news wrapped around an Ealing newspaper and a Westminster newspaper). Because of this, he said, “they've always found it very, very difficult to attract local advertising and in particular, property advertising which is the big earner, as I understand it. They have never attracted that market and we have been able to grab that.”
He denied that council freesheets had had a role to play in the slow demise of privately-owned local newspapers: “Circulation figures suggest they were declining well before we came on the scene,” he said, adding that there was a “media void” when it came to the local press in west London: “Local authorities have a need to communicate with residents, not only for statutory notices but also for many of the demands that are put on us by central Government and we need to communicate with 180,000-odd residents in our borough. It is simply not an option for us to rely entirely on the paid-for local newspapers to provide that communication,” he said.
At the end of the session, one of the MPs on the panel praised h&f news as “a very effective business model”. “It's not losing money, why don't you privatise it?” he asked.
Cllr Loveday suggested the idea was not so far-fetched: “Interestingly, I gather we have had an approach to purchase the paper, which in this current media environment I would imagine is almost unheard of,” he said.
“Presumably you'd consider selling it if it would allow you to concentrate on core services?” the MP asked.
“It would be very complicated to do but certainly if somebody's going to pay our council taxpayers a substantial sum of money to do this, then we would be silly not to accept. We will consider offers,” said Cllr Loveday.
Yasmine Estaphanos
October 29, 2009
