The Fulham & Hammersmith Chronicle has been accused of turning into a local council propaganda sheet.
Chris Underwood, who runs the Shepherd's Bush blog, claims the paper - published by Trinity Mirror - is acting as a mouthpiece for Hammersmith & Fulham council.
It follows the signing of a six-year deal between the publisher and the council for the paper to carry, on an exclusive basis, the council's statutory notices and recruitment advertising. It is worth �75,000 a year to Trinity.
That agreement followed the council's closure of its own paper once the government banned local authorities from publishing newspapers.
During the run-up to that prohibition, the Chronicle ran a campaign, "Proper papers not propaganda", which alleged that the council was producing a publication "masquerading as an independent newspaper."
Now the Chronicle is being accused of doing the same thing by Underwood's blog. He writes:
"The Chronicle has now agreed to carry the propaganda instead which will be written by the same press officers and presumably will continue to be as one-sided...
I am not the only one to have noticed a distinct lack of criticism coming from the Chronicle in recent weeks towards the council."
Underwood's allegations were repudiated in tweets and comments beneath the article. One gave links to Chronicle stories critical of the council, but all predated the deal between paper and council, so they were irrelevant.
Underwood has followed up today with a further posting, Fulham Chronicle censors local MP in which he reveals that the latest column for the paper by Hammersmith's Labour MP, Andy Slaughter, was censored.
The column put forward for publication by Slaughter - who shadow justice minister - concluded with the sentence:
"Sadly, this newspaper is also prey to such tactics, reporting the White City and Shepherd's Bush Market schemes without any critical commentary, and of course carrying the council's propaganda pages, paid for from our council tax."
Underwood quotes Slaughter as saying of the paper's decision to cut that sentence:
"It proves the point I was making that the paper is no longer independent of the council and they are understandably sensitive about that."
Well, up to a point, Andy. I can't imagine any paper publishing such a sentence about itself. He was asking to be censored, was he not?
That does not, of course, invalidate claims that the Chronicle has been lured into being the very thing it once accused the council's defunct paper of being - a Pravda on the rates.
Can the paper show that it is still an independent publication holding local power to account?
I have pulled up several stories on its website from May and June and can find nothing in the least bit critical of the council.
That's not conclusive proof that it is a propaganda organ. But it is surprising, is it not?
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/greenslade/2011/jun/08/council-run-newspapers-local-newspapers
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