Eric Pickles is correct – we don’t need council newspapers, with their gushing stories and no attempt to hold local politicians to account. Instead, town halls should support independent media outlets through a scrutiny tax
Like a stopped clock, Eric Pickles is allowed to be right some of the time. The Communities’ Secretary’s bid to limit how often councils can publish free, glossy newspapers in his recent (and quaintly titled) code of practice on local authority publicity is one such occasion.
Local government’s panjandrums are unhappy at his cramping of their proprietorial style by limiting any publications they plan that ‘emulate commercial newspapers in style or content’ to just four a year.
Usually depicted as the hard man squaring up to recalcitrant local authorities, on this one Pickles is turning out to be a softie: he should do away with these ‘Town Hall Pravdas’ altogether.
It’s not just that council newspapers are a bad idea because they are invariably full of jargon, bad photos and gushing pieces about how wonderful the local council is. Or that in straitened times the cost of producing them is simply unjustifiable.
It’s that this vanity publishing is wrong in principle; allowing councils off the hook from having to engage more thoroughly and transparently with the public they serve.
Needless to say, the Local Government Association doesn’t share this view. Responding to Pickles’ plan, its spokesman, David Holdstock, told PR Week:
‘At a time when councils are having to make significant changes, more than ever now we need to be able to communicate effectively and regularly.’
Of course, councils need to inform and consult with the public – and should celebrate their successes too. But local authorities also need to be held to account. They don’t get every decision right. They make mistakes. They misspend money. Can anyone seriously say stories like these ever make it into council freesheets? Without such a rounded assessment they are what they are: crude propaganda.
Rather than plugging the gap between the governed and the governing, they help to make it wider. They provide a partisan account, which, frankly, most residents are smart enough to discount. However, councils love them because they are a convenient – if expensive – way of dumping out information, particularly about consultation exercises, on the basis that blanket distribution means that residents have been consulted with.
But there is another, perhaps more obvious, way in which councils should communicate with the communities they serve and that is through their independent local media. There is simply no need for council newspapers when we still have the real thing.
Indeed, as the media landscape changes with digital beginning to push out traditional print media, there are a growing number of online as well as offline publications willing to pore over the decisions that are taken in the public’s name. Rather than seeing this as an unwanted intrusion, councils should welcome the added attention as yet another way of telling their story.
The smarter ones already do, treating credible local bloggers as part of the media community. Some, however, are still in the dark ages about this new scrutiny. My local council reckons it will cost £100,000 to webstream council meetings so doesn’t bother. But in Birmingham it cost the city council just £100 to set-up their initial system.
Is there any interest? Well, between February and April this year, there were 39,000 viewings of Birmingham’s various council meetings.
To ensure there is proper, independent scrutiny of local public service providers – councils, the NHS, the police and perhaps even further and higher education institutions – there should be a levy to subsidise dedicated, independent public affairs journalism.
Call it a local scrutiny tax. It would raise an amount of money from these public bodies that could be then split between different local independent media, buying a set amount of journalistic time and resource dedicated to covering public bodies thoroughly and dispassionately.
Many local newspapers are struggling commercially and have lost dedicated specialist correspondents covering the council or the NHS, and democratic oversight of these bodies suffers accordingly.
Given we already subsidise BBC journalism through the licence fee there is no great issue in extending the principle. (In fact, as a public body themselves, part of the licence fee could be used to contribute to this local pot). Also, it wouldn’t be difficult for industry training bodies to devise a special qualification for journalists benefitting from this arrangement to ensure quality control.
From the homes-for-votes scandal at Westminster, through to the damning findings against Mid Staffordshire NHS Trust, the need for independent scrutiny of our local public services is vital.
There is still a place for those hackneyed photos of grinning council chiefs handing over big cheques, but it isn’t in expensive council newspapers any longer. We need to invest in and strengthen the real, independent local media instead.
Kevin Meagher is a former special adviser in the last government and a political blogger
