The basic job of a journalist is to report what people have said, not what you think they should have said. The latter belongs in the category of spin and public relations.
Which is why when you read quotes from a council meeting in, say, the East London Advertiser, you can be fairly confident they’re accurate, while those reported in East End Life have to be treated a little sceptically.
The following email exchange between the council’s press office and Tory councillor Tim Archer this afternoon is enlightening in several respects.
Tim is initially being asked by Kelly Powell, the town hall’s “head of media”, whether she has an accurate report of the words he used at Wednesday’s full council meeting. She explains these quotes are for an article they’re running in this Sunday’s East End Life. (This is itself is interesting because the costs of Kelly’s time–and those of other press officers–are never billed to East End Life, which means the paper’s costs are understated. Here we have proof of the work they’re doing.)
Then after Tim agrees the quote is accurate, the press office says actually they can’t report it because the council finance chief (the section 151 officer) doesn’t agree with it. Tim is then told what he is allowed to say in East End Life.
So what we have is East End Life, a paper that costs taxpayers £1.5million a year to run, effectively censoring the democratic debates held on behalf of taxpayers in its own council chamber.
No wonder its critics dub it Pravda.
Here’s the email exchange in chronological order:
From: Kelly Powell
Date: Fri, 1 Mar 2013 10:57:05 +0000
To: Peter Golds, Tim Archer
Cc: Takki Sulaiman>; Emily Blackshaw<; Ross Archer>
Subject: Request for quote approval for EEL
Dear Councillors
Further to Wednesday’s budget Council meeting, we are running an article in East End Life summarising the proposals and next steps in the budget setting process.
We would like to include a quote from you and have the following comment you made on the night:
Cllr Tim Archer, said: “In effect this budget is seeking to mortgage the future and the budget black hole grows to £94 million in 2017.”
Cllr Peter Golds, said: “East End Life should be closed immediately as the government will soon be introducing legislation to prevent councils from printing newspapers.”
Please could you let me know asap if you are happy for this to be used in the East End Life article.
With apologies for the tight turnaround, I would be very grateful if you could come back to me by 4pm today in order to meet the paper’s print deadline.
Kind regards
Kelly
Kelly Powell
Head of Media
Tower Hamlets Council
From: Tim Archer
Sent: 01 March 2013 11:56
To: Kelly Powell; Peter Golds
Cc: Takki Sulaiman; Emily Blackshaw; Ross Archer
Subject: Re: Request for quote approval for EEL
Hi Kelly, I think the quote was ‘by 2017’ not ‘in 2017’.
Could you let me know the context of the quote, ie the para preceding and after where you plan to use it?
Thanks
Tim.
From: Kelly Powell <>
Date: Fri, 1 Mar 2013 12:13:37 +0000
To: Tim Archer, Peter Golds
Cc: Takki Sulaiman>; Emily Blackshaw, Ross Archer
Subject: RE: Request for quote approval for EEL
Hi Cllr Archer
Thanks for the swift response.
The context is that there will be a pull out box in the article, which describes the Conservative Group’s amendments and then the quotes from both you and Cllr Golds (subject to Cllr Gold’s approval).
Kind regards
Kelly
From: Tim Archer
Sent: 01 March 2013 14:14
To: Kelly Powell; Peter Golds
Cc: Takki Sulaiman; Emily Blackshaw; Ross Archer
Subject: Re: Request for quote approval for EEL
Yes I’m happy with that.
From: Kelly Powell
Sent: 01 March 2013 15:28
To: Tim Archer’
Cc: Ross Archer; Takki Sulaiman; Emily Blackshaw
Subject: RE: Request for quote approval for EEL
Importance: High
Hi Cllr Archer
The Section 151 officer has reviewed all the figures in this article for EEL and has said that he can’t verify the £94m figure in the quote below. We can’t therefore include it in EEL as it’s currently drafted:
Cllr Tim Archer, said: “In effect this budget is seeking to mortgage the future and the budget black hole grows to £94 million by 2017.”
I understand that officers have advised that there will be further savings to be made after 2015/16 (paragraph 1.3 of the budget report), but without a revised forecast outlining specific figures/savings.
Can you please provide an alternative quote asap for use in EEL?
Thanks
Kelly
From: Kelly Powell >
Date: Fri, 1 Mar 2013 16:22:39 +0000
To: ‘tim archer
Cc: Ross Archer>; Takki Sulaiman< >; Emily Blackshaw< >
Subject: RE: Request for quote approval for EEL
Hi Cllr Archer
Further to my [last] email, can I suggest:
Cllr Tim Archer, said: “In effect the mayor’s budget is seeking to mortgage the future and in our view the budget black hole will grow to £94 million by 2017.”
Regards
Kelly
From: tim archer
To: Kelly Powell
CC: Ross Archer; Takki Sulaiman < >; Emily Blackshaw <Emily.Blackshaw >; cllrpetergolds < >
Sent: Fri, 1 Mar 2013 17:37
Subject: Re: Request for quote approval for EEL
So I thought you were quoting me from the budget meeting. I did not realise that a quote from a member had to be agreed by finance officers. Calls into question the impartiality of the reporting in eastend life really doesn’t it?
UPDATE – Saturday, March 2, 6.30pm
It wasn’t just the Tories who were cheesed off their quotes from the council meeting were being censored. Labour, as you can read below, were having a far spikier row with Takki on Friday afternoon as well.
This issue goes to the heart of what East End Life is about. According to its website:
East End Life is the council’s free weekly newspaper which is distributed to more than 83,000 homes and businesses across the borough each week, enabling us to keep residents up-to-date in an informal and accessible way on the work of the council.
The word “newspaper” is used deliberately and it claims to keep residents informed of the “work of the council”. At the very core of the work of the council is the debate in the council chamber. Yet on this issue, its spin doctors have tied themselves up in knots.
If they believed they were unable to report what is said in the council chamber (on the dubious basis that that’s political), then why did the paper’s bosses ask approval in the first place for quotes uttered in that debate? Wouldn’t it have been better simply to have asked councillors to supply fresh quotes? Or instead, if the Section 151 officer was unhappy with the members’ quotes, why not just have a few words from him or her on those particular points of fact?
As you can see from the following row between Takki and Cllr Josh Peck, we now learn that only “statements or outcomes of positive policy” emanating from the council chamber are reportable by EEL. So if you are a resident who traipses across the borough (on public transport) to submit a question or raise a criticism at a council meeting, that effort, and that cause,will never be reported in the very paper you pay for.
Here’s the row:
From: Kelly Powell
Sent: 01 March 2013 11:02
To: Amy Whitelock; Carlo Gibbs
Cc: David Courcoux; Takki Sulaiman; Emily Blackshaw; Joshua Peck
Subject: Request for quote approval for EEL
Dear Councillors
Further to Wednesday’s budget Council meeting, we are running an article in East End Life summarising the proposals and next steps in the budget setting process. We would like to include a quote from you and have the following comment you made on the night:
Councillor Carlo Gibbs, said: “This is a wasteful budget that makes promises that cannot be continued beyond a two year period. We want to see a truly sustainable budget that protects residents from the worst of the cuts by stopping spending on what we do not need such as East End Life and mayoral advisors.”
Councillor Amy Whitelock: “Residents have lost trust in politics and politicians. We can only restore that trust by spending less on bureaucracy and propaganda and more on frontline services.”
Please could you let me know asap if you are happy for this to be used in the East End Life article.
With apologies for the tight turnaround, I would be very grateful if you could come back to me by 4pm today in order to meet the paper’s print deadline.
Kind regards
Kelly
Kelly Powell
Head of Media
Tower Hamlets Council
From: Kelly Powell <>
Date: Fri, 1 Mar 2013 15:21:09 +0000
To: David Courcoux< >; Joshua Peck< >
Cc: Emily Blackshaw< >; Takki Sulaiman< >
Subject: RE: Request for quote approval for EEL
Hi Cllr Peck and David
The Section 151 officer has reviewed all the figures in this article for EEL and has said that he can’t verify the £55m figure in the quote below. We can’t therefore include it in EEL as it’s currently drafted:
Cllr Joshua Peck, Labour Group Leader, said: “With a £55 million unfunded black hole – and massive pre-election spending – at the heart of the Mayor’s budget Labour councillors couldn’t support it. Our amendment starts to address this financial challenge and is a clear commitment to residents that we won’t play fast and loose with their money or services.”
I understand that the figure was thought to come from a Cabinet report in June 2012, but am advised that report showed a £44m gap to the end of 2016/17, but that the figure is now out of date and there is not a revised forecast published beyond 2015/16.
Can you please provide an alternative quote asap for use in EEL?
Thanks
Kelly
From: Kelly Powell >
Date: Fri, 1 Mar 2013 16:19:38 +0000
To: David Courcoux; Joshua Peck
Cc: Takki Sulaiman; Emily Blackshaw< >
Subject: FW: Request for quote approval for EEL
Hi both
I’ve spoken to David about the fact that this figure is in the agreed Motion, but I’m also aware that the S151 comments on the Motion state that the funding gap for 2016/17 has not yet been calculated.
Can I therefore suggest the following:
Cllr Joshua Peck, Labour Group Leader, said: “We believe that there is a £55 million unfunded black hole at the heart of the Mayor’s budget and Labour councillors couldn’t support it. Our amendment starts to address this financial challenge and is a clear commitment to residents that we won’t play fast and loose with their money or services.”
Please could you confirm asap if you are happy for this to be used.
Thanks
Kelly
From: Joshua Peck
Sent: 01 March 2013 16:45
To: Kelly Powell; David Courcoux
Cc: Takki Sulaiman; Emily Blackshaw
Subject: Re: Request for quote approval for EEL
I’m unimpressed, although not surprised to be honest, that you won’t just report a decision of Council. East End Life serves both the Council and the administration, and trying what are clearly political positions is nonsensical. I’ll go with: Cllr Joshua Peck, Labour Group Leader, said: “With an unfunded black hole estimated to be over £55million – and massive pre-election spending – at the heart of the Mayor’s budget Labour councillors couldn’t support it. Our amendment starts to address this financial challenge and is a clear commitment to residents that we won’t play fast and loose with their money or services.”
From: Takki Sulaiman
To: Joshua Peck
To: Kelly Powell
To: David Courcoux
Cc: Emily Blackshaw
Subject: RE: Request for quote approval for EEL
Sent: 1 Mar 2013 16:55
Hi Councillor Peck
The principle we’re trying to uphold is that EEL represents the council not only the council chamber – but we do try to report outcomes and statements of positive policy from the chamber. EEL has never included an allegation about pre-election spending before and we do not cover political accusations made in the chamber. This means we cannot run the phrase ‘and massive pre-election spending’.
If we included a similar phrase from the Executive about another party’s position we would rightly be criticised. The minor deletion is suggested in red below.
Regards
Takki
Takki Sulaiman
Head of Communications
Tower Hamlets Council
——Original Message——
To: Takki Sulaiman
To: Kelly Powell
To: David Courcoux
To: Stephen Halsey
Cc: Emily Blackshaw
Subject: Re: Request for quote approval for EEL
Sent: 1 Mar 2013 16:58
Takki
You regularly include political statements from the administration, including in the Mayor’s column. You’re regularly, for example, carried the lie that there have been no frontline service cuts. That’s not only a political statement but its manifestly untrue.
Why the double standard?
Josh
Trial by Jeory 
You wrote “The basic job of a journalist is to report what people have said, not what you think they should have said. The latter belongs in the category of spin and public relations”
Yet English newspaper reporters regularly use “Cut & Paste” to plonk into their publications other people’s carefully worded Press Releases. These days very few “reporters” are truly reporters.
Why don’t you describe the council’s “head of media” more truthfully as the council’s Chief Spin Doctor ? The fact that councils employ people to mislead the public and distort the truth is a bigger story than the potential loss of £94m.
Why too are councils, the deliverers of public community services, allowed to be political out-of-control cesspits unaccountable to the public funding them ?
The Tower Hamlets mess is solely due to the major political parties, Lab and Tories, that created the Local Government system of which you now complain.
Having a moan on a public blog is merely the first step in an overdue long journey to reform England’s wasteful public community services.
What are the annual running costs of EEL ?
P.S. Having a moan, however well deserved and justified, is not going to change the system which those in authority call “democratic” despite the postal votes abuses and the fact some voters can not read or write in English and can not sign their own names !
The right to vote isn’t tied to your literacy levels. And a good thing, too. Someone’s ability to read/write doesn’t impact on their ability to exercise their vote. I would say more about the clearly racist sentiments behind your comment but I really cannot be arsed.
Although I actually agree with you about the ‘right’ this comment is somewhat simplistic, produces the knee-jerk race card [the bane of this borough] and is probably disingenuous, since you’re ‘Anon1’.
Unhappily or happily, democracy isn’t just ballot boxes and voting, it’s also evolution, debate, being informed, understanding ideas about utility: http://economics.about.com/od/economicsglossary/g/utilitarian.htm rather than voting for someone or something that will bring you the best ‘return’, looks like you or believes the same things as you. So levels of literacy do matter in a well-functioning democracy as they matter in society. Tower Hamlets, isn’t, of course, a well-functioning democracy in any sense of the word.
Also, finally there’s a difference between deciding not to learn the language of the country where one lives [I saw a lot of that in my twenty years abroad], not being able to and not being given the facilities or being allowed to. So immigrant literacy is not a ‘simple’ matter either.
Ted, slightly aside, however how the hell has the Mayor’s blog which is highly political been given a platform from the public funded council web site. Within one click, a person is directed from a public service funded and branded website of local government to attacks on the mayor’s opposition. No distinction or note is provided to ensure readers are aware that they are leaving a public service web site to a personal political blog. Perhaps the officers of the council have no other option but to do what they are told by the Mayor’s office. The shameful and difficult truth is that LR has got the next election all stitched up as well as the resources and officers of local government. God help us all.
The alternative (to proposing the amended quote) would be for the reporter to include a line saying that Archer’s figure is wrong. I.e. suggesting that Archer is either lying or he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Would that have been preferable?
This is such a non-story Ted. So much more that could be covered! I hear the council meeting itself was a shambles. Nothing particularly new there but I hear this one went south quite quickly for the Labour group and Josh in particular. Are we going to hear your first hand account?
1. I wasn’t there.
2. The “alternative” was to produce a fair and accurate report of what was actually said by all sides, given that EEL is there for the council as a whole not just the ruling administration.
3. It’s by no means a non-story. It goes to the heart of what EEL is and why ruling admins of both Labour and Lutfur have been so reluctant to give it up. It’s a v powerful propaganda tool. It’s why no letters are ever published in it.
I’m with Anon1 on this. When asked the press officer explains that the quote is for a pull-out box containing details of Tory amendments together with quotes from the two councillors. In other words the article would be highlighting the amendments and drawing them to the particular attention of the reader.
A verbatim quote buried in the middle of a long article might be able to get away with putting forward unsubstantiated figures. What is, effectively, a sub-headline can’t (or, in my opinion, shouldn’t) get away with unsubstantiated numbers. When I’ve written or edited magazine articles I’ve endeavoured to make sure that facts and figures are correct or else stated as a matter of opinion. A couple of years ago you allowed me to do a guest post on this blog and you asked to check something I had written before it was published.
I have no idea what a section 151 officer is but if they are sub-editing for accuracy I think they are right not to want readers to be misled into thinking that the £94m by 2017 figure is fact rather than opinion.
And at least EEL are offering up some real coverage of the other parties for once.
PS EEL did used to include letters once upon a time. I didn’t realise it had stopped. Maybe it’s because you have to have an interested readership in order to receive correspondence.
A section 151 officer is in charge of council finance. It was Resources Director Chris Naylor until he quit before Christmas.
I’ve updated the post for a further exchange between the press office and Labour on the same issue on Friday.
I think you’re on dodgy ground here. You seem to be saying that the word of the Section 151 officer is sacrosanct, that it can’t be anything else but fact. How do you know Tim Archer’s figure is “unsubstantiated”??
If that officer has a problem with alternative figures, why not just have a few words from him or her explaining their position.
As I say in my updated thoughts in the post, I think the EEL press office has tied itself in knots on this issue and in doing so exposed the fundamental flaw in EEL.
Worth having a look at the actual article that ended up in EEL.
None of these quotes appear and while there are bref mentions of the Labour and Tory suggestions, 80 per cent of the piece is devoted to ideas proffered by Lutfur, Rania Khan and Oli Rahman.
Balanced?
I have defended EEL for years: I find it really helps me keep abreast of what is going on in the borough from a “things to do this weekend” kind of perspective; the local restaurant reviews; planning applications and (I never thought I’d say this) its’ One Tower Hamlets community cohesion slant makes me feel good.
But POLITICALLY it is getting worse and worse. Its prime purpose these days is to promote the Mayor and his cabinet. The other (ie the vast majority) of non-cabinet councillors never get a look in (this article under discussion would be something of a first – apart from the annual Meet Your Councillor double-page spread).
The Mayor shouldn’t be allowed to use EEL as a taxpayer funded propaganda sheet.
Dear “communcations” department,
1. Go to Google.
2. Type in “Tower Hamlets”
3. Select the “Tower Hamlets Council” Link.
4. On the top of this local government website, funded by the taxpayer select the “Mayors Blog” link.
5. See “Tower Hamlets Labour vote to slash funds for the disabled, the elderly and the 3rd Sector” and “Tower Hamlets Labour are doing the Tories dirty work and “Tower Hamlets Labour Group threaten to block progressive budget and many more stories presented by the “Political Advisor to the Mayor” funded by the hard working people of Tower Hamlets. Blatant political attacks from the prime position on this local government website. So when you say “we do not cover political accusations made in the chamber. This means we cannot run the phrase ‘and massive pre-election spending’ this does not cover the direct attacks by the Mayor from the Tower Hamlets website link.
I especially love this bit from Sulaiman’s email:
So here we have an explicit admission of the ‘good news only’ policy by one of the principal perps.