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Spending on 'Big Brother-style' media monitoring is attacked
William Green Political Correspondent A GOVERNMENT department already under fire for not giving Yorkshire a fair funding deal is today accused of wasting £75,000 a year on a "Big Brother-style" media monitoring operation.
Furious MPs and campaigners demanded answers from the Department for Transport (DfT) on why it is spending money grading journalists – including two Yorkshire Post reporters – on whether they provide favourable coverage, rather than on improving the country's roads and railways.
Liberal Democrat transport spokesman Tom Brake said the monitoring of journalists "smacks of Big Brother" and that he would be tabling a Parliamentary question today demanding an explan-ation from the Government.
Philip Davies, Conservative MP for Shipley, said that through Parliamentary questions he would be asking all Government departments whether they monitored the media in light of the latest revelation.
His comments come after it emerged recently that West Yorkshire health chiefs drew up a list of 250 journalists who cover the NHS – including Yorkshire Post health correspondent Mike Waites – and rated them according to whether they write favourably about the health service.
That operation, revealed by the Yorkshire Post, was part of a 17,500-a-year exercise but health bosses soon announced a climbdown after it emerged they rated a Labour Minister as negative about the NHS.
The DfT has come under increasing pressure to give the region a fair deal over transport funding in the wake of the Yorkshire Post's Road to Ruin campaign, which has highlighted how the region is being short-changed by billions of pounds.
Leeds North West MP Greg Mulholland is angry that the DfT axed the Leeds Supertram project – putting at risk huge investment – over cost concerns while spending money on monitoring journalists.
"It is very revealing that during the many months that the Government couldn't tell people in Leeds whether they were going to get the Supertram or not, they were spending time and a considerable amount of money following journalists to see if they were saying positive things or not," said the Liberal Democrat MP.
He said it was another example of the Government's "obsession with spin" and that road congestion highlighted by the Road to Ruin campaign could be tackled if it spent more time and money on it.
Mr Davies said: "I think people in my constituency would much prefer the 75,000 went on sorting out the traffic congestion in Saltaire rather than monitoring how kind journalists are to the DfT.
"If they just focused on doing a good job they wouldn't have to worry about people writing negative stories about them and the best way to get negative stories about them is to waste money in this fashion."
Mr Brake said: "This smacks of Big Brother. It is one short step from monitoring journalists to censoring their output and restricting their access to Government Ministers and departments.
"Rather than snooping on journalists' output they should be investing the
desperately needed cash in any number of transport projects up and down the country."
Environmental campaign group Friends of the Earth said the money did not need to be spent to see the public, which the media reflected, was fed up with the transport system.
Mike Childs, head of campaigns, said: "The DfT needs to be careful on how it spends taxpayers' money and given that the public can see the transport system is a shambles and needs much more investment in better public transport it is surprising that the Government sees it fit to squander money on getting people to monitor newspaper coverage.
"If Ministers got out of their ivory towers and spoke to people in Yorkshire they would get a very clear sense of what is needed."
The DfT confirmed the monitoring exercise costs 75,000 a year and insisted it was "common practice" in the public and private sector to carry out such research to understand the effectiveness of its communications.
"The Department is no different. It is really about informing us about how effective we are at communicating," said a spokeswoman, who also claimed individual journalists were not being monitored.
william.green@ypn.co.uk
Positives and negatives for reporters
l Yorkshire Post Political Correspondent William Green is recorded as being the second-highest impact regional journalist covering transport in the country.
l His stories between January 15, 2004 and May 22 this year are given a negative rating of just over 40 points, the same score in the neutral ranking and 30 points for positive.
l Overall, he was ranked as having the second highest level of coverage.
l Paul Whitehouse, the Yorkshire's Post chief reporter in Sheffield, is also ranked in the top 30 in terms of coverage and impact – coming eighth and 20th respectively. His stories were mainly rated as neutral, receiving just under 40 points in this ranking.
l Overall, the Yorkshire Post gets the fourth spot for
what the Department for Transport regards as negative reporting by regional newspapers but second in the positive rating.
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Saturday 26 May 2012
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