Wednesday 4 November 2009

H&F News branded "propaganda" .. by the conservatives

H&F NewsIt seems the propaganda rag, which you pay for, and which puts out completely misleading articles like this, and has a devastating effect on independent local media by hoovering up their advertising revenue is attracting the disapproval of even the Tories in parliament.

Read the transcript of Cllr Mark Loveday being challenged about this by Philip Davies MP, and make your own mind up..

Philip Davies: …we will start off with Hammersmith and Fulham. This is, let us face it, council propaganda masquerading as an independent newspaper. There is nothing here to the casual reader that would indicate that this had anything to do with a council publication. This is masquerading as an independent newspaper. If you are so proud of your publication, let us have it plastered all over it that this is a council publication so that everybody who reads it knows exactly where they stand when they read it. Why are you not upfront about what this is?

Councillor Loveday: I can bowl for Britain on the subject of propaganda, and Sefton Delmer and the radio stations that were set up in this country during the war, and the distinctions between black propaganda and other propaganda, and so on, but in terms of residents knowing that this is a council newspaper, my simple answer is that we do test this, and the latest survey showed that 80% of residents said it was clearly a council newspaper. People are aware of that. I suspect that 80% is a pretty good score by any means.

Philip Davies: I will give you a better score, which is 100%. I guarantee to you that, if you were to put on the front of your paper (and plaster it quite prominently) that this is the newspaper delivered to you by Hammersmith and Fulham Council, you would be able to improve on your 80%, you would probably be able to get to 100%. We would all know where we were and also you would not need to spend any money testing out whether or not people knew; you would be able to know straight away that people knew. I know you are obsessed with saving money at Hammersmith and Fulham Council. I have given you a perfect money saving idea, so can I now expect you to save money on testing it out and plaster over it that this is council propaganda so that your residents know exactly what it is they are reading?

Councillor Loveday: Can I ask you a question?

Philip Davies: No, I am asking you a question.

Councillor Loveday: Will you give us the £400,000 to put it through our paid-for local media, because that is not going to happen.

Philip Davies: I am asking you, on here, to make it abundantly clear to your residents that this is a council publication, right on the front page. You are saying how good it is. Why are you ashamed of it? Surely you should want to be proud of the fact that the local authority is putting out this kind of propaganda. Let everybody know why you are hiding your light under a bushel.

Councillor Loveday: The majority of copies, I think, certainly did have a strapline reference.

Philip Davies: I am just unlucky, am I?

Councillor Loveday: No, I have not followed the details of the straplines on the various editions. The front cover, of course, is a slip advert, or a wrap-around advert.

Philip Davies: Yes, inside is even worse.

Councillor Loveday: Inside this, obviously, the front page---

Philip Davies: Yes, I know exactly what you are doing: you are putting out propaganda and masquerading it as independent news.

Councillor Loveday: Propaganda is a loaded word.

Philip Davies: It is indeed.

26 comments:

  1. What I'm struggling to figure out is what the £400,000 figure would be *for*. To stick a strapline on a newspaper header?

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  2. i think he meant that it would take 400K to put the info that is within Pravda via the local media - but you're right it isnt very clear. what is clear in my view is that our own money is being used to pump political proaganda disguised as independent journalism through our letterboxes!

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  3. [...] even more credit for - people like me can hardly carp from the sidelines about it being as biased as an article in H&F News if it is chaired by someone like [...]

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  4. [...] Council had any plans to actually support an independent local media in the Borough which their own Pravda-style publication has helped to destroy. He dodged the question and simply said that the independent media had been [...]

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  5. [...] They obviously think this is something they are going to get away with because they’ve taken all the fencing down and declared the jobs done. I wonder whether our Council, fresh from having spent more of our money hoisting yet more propaganda signs all the way up Uxbridge Road, is planning to do anything about it? Somehow I doubt this will feature in H&F News. [...]

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  6. [...] this is a major political defeat for them and it will of course be interesting to see how its propaganda-dressed-as-news will report this, if at [...]

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  7. [...] of Israel. Spot the difference? And Andy, in a technique perhaps learned from our Council’s propaganda-dressed-as-news freesheet, omits to mention that he is a supporter of another lobby group. It is called Labour [...]

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  8. [...] is indeed very impressive but I have to qualify the rave reviews bit by saying I read that in the propaganda-dressed-as-news so it might not be quite [...]

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  9. [...] lack of any widely read local independent media they have chosen this blog. Somehow I doubt the Council’s own freesheet would have carried the [...]

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  10. [...] your Council is saying about this project to others. For some reason I just didn’t trust propaganda-dressed-as-news to bring you the full lowdown.. The text of the letter is as follows, make your own minds [...]

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  11. [...] central Government and voter’s responses to promises of tax cuts constantly carried in propaganda-dressed-as-news. Stephen Greenhalgh, currently the Leader, leaves H&F to become a member of the House of Lords [...]

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  12. [...] man said that this meant the poorest were paying more for less in Hammersmith and subsidising the much-trumpeted tax cuts that had benefitted the more well-off. Cameron was having none of this and flatly [...]

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  13. [...] 8, 2010 by chrisunderwood Is this the end for propaganda-dressed-as-news, the tax-payer funded propaganda sheet produced by H&F Council? Trinity Mirror, which publishes [...]

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  14. [...] and the Tories are targetting us with the air war plus ground troops hard. The latest copy of propaganda-dressed-as-news dropped through your letterbox packed with at least three articles I spotted last night as being [...]

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  15. [...] that slapped me down at this Borough Summit for daring to ask that the Council stops funding a propaganda sheet and supports the local media?! It is certainly the same Cllr Greenhalgh who could stop hoovering up [...]

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  16. [...] own Paul Bristow, writing in Pravda under the headline of “Your views on Super Sewer flushed away“, said: The council is [...]

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  17. [...] local government ombudsman as they have been. They even put this in the most recent edition of Pravda, which must be the first negative story about the Council that has ever made it in [...]

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  18. [...] and get picked up elsewhere keep growing – as well as those that get studiously ignored by Pravda. If they weren’t here (or now in the excellent Fulham Chronicle) you wouldn’t get to [...]

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  19. [...] none of this has ever featured in Pravda, despite the inevitable impact on services to residents. Instead this is the line they prefer to [...]

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  20. [...] fact I think they should do more – and perhaps spend less on more expensive propaganda like Pravda. Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)Hammersmith flooding: it’s your [...]

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  21. [...] credit for this as well. In a recession its not an easy thing to do, and however irritating their constant propagandising is, fair play to the Council for achieving it, it will make a difference to a lot of people in the [...]

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  22. [...] all this is why Conservatives in Parliament called Hammersmith Council’s newspaper “propaganda” that shouldn’t be allowed. And now Conservatives in Greenwhich are calling for the Labour propaganda newspaper to be banned [...]

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  23. [...] Council has been condemned for doing this by their own Conservative colleagues in Parliament, and in local government yet still continue the practice. They have been condemned repeatedly by [...]

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  24. [...] campaign by the Fulham Chronicle in their effort to have the tax-payer funded Council “newspaper” closed [...]

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  25. [...] think regular readers will gather what I think of most of that statement but in the interests of balance I thought it important to present the [...]

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