Abstract
Here's a random selection of tips that arrived in my inbox this morning:
‘Children are being removed from their families by ______ county council social workers on the basis of manufactured evidence …’
‘A council leader is using a false identity to abuse opponents on Twitter …’
‘Human resources staff at a large public body have re-written their job descriptions in order to go on to higher grades and benefit from substantial pay rises, whilst re-grading others in the opposite direction …’
‘A well-known MP is being blackmailed into supporting an undeserving cause…’
‘A public consultation about a large and controversial housing development in the greenbelt is being doctored to remove negative responses …’
‘A cash-strapped council is paying consultants £1,000 a day for advice on how to save money …’
I have to deliver a fortnightly, 1,400-word column on local government misdemeanours for Private Eye. It's not a big word count, but we try to get five or six items in each issue, so my sample of possible stories (in the admittedly unlikely event of them all standing up) would provide the basis for an OK column. But these examples are taken from just one morning's emails. Over the course of the fortnightly cycle, I will receive perhaps 200 tips via email, plus more over the phone, via Twitter and in the post.
So my cup of stories runneth over. Trebles all round? Not quite. Of course it's good to have plenty to work on. When I started writing Rotten Boroughs in 1999 it was sometimes a struggle to find enough to fill the page. That's never the case today. The number of tips and leads has trebled or quadrupled since then. While this is welcome it is also sometimes frustrating and weirdly guilt-inducing. If we get 200 tips but discount, say, 60 per cent because they are wrong, not sufficiently interesting or not possible to stand up, that still leaves 70 or 80 stories that might make the magazine if we had the time and the space. Not that many people would want to read 10 pages of local government exposés, but I still feel bad about disappointing all those sources who come to us with sound info which never sees the light of day.
Why the information overload? It may be because the column has become better known. It may also be because the people who alert us to stories – local journalists, freelances, councillors, whistleblowers and (the majority) members of the public – find email quick and easy. But email was around long before the turn of the century. There must be something else going on.
There are some clues. When telling a source that I don't think we'll have room for their tale, I often ask: “Have you tried the local paper?” The answers are frequently depressing. Yes, we tried the local weekly but they ignored us/they only print press releases/they said it was legally dangerous/the editor is a golfing pal of the council leader. Sometimes the source works for the local paper, but can't get anything mildly controversial past their editor.
[Disclaimer: many local and regional papers and reporters still do a terrific job at a time of increasing commercial pressures and dwindling resources, breaking good stories and holding local powers-that-be to account. And many of the stories that we run in Rotten Boroughs are followed up from local paper reports, which we acknowledge. So please don't all write in.]
I know at least three first-class regional reporters who in recent months have given up on trying to break “difficult” stories for their publications and have gone freelance or into PR.
We come across an increasing number of stories that the local press really should have run first, but didn't. In late 2013 we had a tip that the then chief executive of Gloucester city council, Julian Wain, was in a legover situation with one of the council's managers. He instituted a management restructure, which resulted in his squeeze getting a grander title and a big pay rise, while her only rival for promotion was made redundant. The Gloucester Citizen had known about this for weeks, but did not run it until after the Eye had done so – and then cheekily claimed it as an exclusive until forced to climb down by angry online comments.
Two years ago, we exposed boasts by Wirral council that wealthy Chinese investors were poised to pump millions into a £175m “international trade centre” on the south bank of the Mersey, creating thousands of jobs, as bunk. Stella Shiu, the chair of the principal would-be investor, Sam Wa group, was a bankrupt from Hong Kong with a string of failed businesses behind her. No one in international trade had ever heard of Sam Wa. The Financial Times followed up and confirmed our story on the ground in China, yet the local press didn't think it worth reporting.
A listings website in North Yorkshire, Real Whitby, was the first to draw attention in 2013 to serious conflicts of interest among members of the North York Moors National Park Authority, who would benefit personally from granting planning permission to Sirius Minerals' proposed giant potash mine within the park. We checked out and followed up their stories but the local press didn't; a senior park authority member who stood to make £1m selling mineral rights resigned.
Real Whitby also did sterling work revealing embarrassing connections between the late former mayor of Scarborough, the paedophile “ice cream millionaire” Peter Jaconelli, his friend Jimmy Savile and other prominent figures in the town. Again, too hot to handle for the local press, but both the Eye and BBC North followed up and found the Real Whitby “amateurs” were on the money.
These were all serious stories, but not particularly difficult ones. Nor were they all that legally dodgy because they were true. Are many overworked young reporters on understaffed local papers now so tied to their desks, recycling press releases, that they never lift the phone or leave the office to chase up proper stories? I think we know the answer to that. And so those stories find their way to Private Eye, which – although grateful – simply doesn't have room for them all. Pity, isn't it?