Local Newspaper Editors Say Public Bodies Becoming More Secretive

Nearly 80 per cent of local newspaper editors believe public bodies such as the local council, police or health authority are becoming more secretive, according to an NS survey

Just 10 per cent of editors from weekly and daily titles said getting information from public bodies had become easier in recent years while 13 per cent said it was neither harder nor easier.

The online survey of local newspaper editors was conducted by the NS for Local Newspaper Week which this year is themed Your Voice.

It found that more than a third (35 per cent) of editors had experienced having a reporter prevented from attending a public meeting or prevented from reporting details from it.

Eighty-two per cent of those who had encountered these obstructions had challenged them and more than two thirds (67 per cent) of those challenges were successful.

NS communications director Lynne Anderson said: “The findings of this survey point towards an extremely worrying trend of increased secrecy among public bodies making it harder for local newspapers to perform their scrutinising role on behalf of their readers.

“Local newspapers act as a watchdog for democracy by shining a spotlight on the workings of public bodies and it cannot be right for this vital function to be undermined.”

The average local newspaper, an average of the weekly and daily titles surveyed, attends 12 meetings of public bodies a month and publishes around 30 stories from these meetings.

More than a fifth (21 per cent) of local newspapers use digital technology such as Twitter to report live from these meetings.

Looking only at papers that cover a criminal court on at least one day out of five, the average local newspaper successfully challenged a reporting restriction on 3.2 occasions in the past year.

And out of all papers surveyed, the average local paper will have a reporter covering a criminal court on an average of 2.3 days out five, according to the survey.

In the past year, the average local newspaper submitted 16 FoI requests and in 81 per cent of cases, the information requested was successfully obtained.

Notes:

• Local Newspaper Week is themed Your Voice and runs from 10-16 May.

• James Morrison, senior lecturer in journalism at Kingston University, is to speak at Press Gazette’s Local Heroes Conference on 14 May. His paper Spin, smoke-filled rooms, and the decline of council reporting by local newspapers: the slow demise of town hall transparency found that, in many areas, local council decision-making has become more secretive.

• A link to the online survey was emailed to all editors on the NS database in April 2010.

• Sixty-three editors from a mix of daily and weekly local and regional newspapers completed it.

• Unless otherwise stated, the figures given are an average of all responses.

For further information please contact Paul Sinker on 020 763 274 24 or sinkerp@newspapersoc.org.uk.