Local Newspapers

Debate between John Whittingdale and Austin Mitchell

Thursday 19th March 2015 Westminster Hall

[Austin Mitchell]

I shall be coming to my comments on the BBC very shortly. I apologise for not responding immediately to my hon. Friend’s question. I have to have a translator, not to translate things from English into Yorkshire dialect, but because I am stone deaf.

I was going to argue that there are more cheering points. Grimsby and north-east Lincolnshire, because it is a real community—unlike most places, which are just slices of somewhere else—has a great interest in its history and politics and has been more supportive. The Grimsby Telegraph has had one of the lowest falls in circulation of any paper. It is making a profit from selling its own past in the form of “Bygones”, which sells well and helps to support the newspaper. The number of people who see the newspaper—the number of eyeballs that read it, whether in digital or print form—has actually increased over the past 20 years.

The hon. Member for Cleethorpes (Martin Vickers) has an outstanding example of enterprise in his constituency in the form of the Cleethorpes Chronicle, a local success story that was started from scratch. That is cheering, and the hope of recovery as the economy recovers, very slowly, will keep us going, but we have a real problem that affects the quality of debate and politics and the sense of community in our societies: the decline of journalism—the decline in the number of journalists and their training—caused by newspapers’ financial problems.

I have envisaged the forthcoming election having to be covered by Members sending in reports of our own speeches—they will not be published as they were previously —and taking selfies. That is how David Montgomery’s vision of a digital future will end up: idiots writing rubbish for electronic forums and sending in photographs of themselves as the authors of this gibberish—[Laughter.] But not me.

Think what our communities would be like without trenchant and active local journalism to cover community and council events, court proceedings and local functions, as opposed to asking people to send in their own photographs, as is increasingly the case. Think of Bradford, where the Poulson scandal was exposed by Ray Fitzwalter at Bradford’s Telegraph and Argus, who later went on to work for Granada. Think of the various problems unearthed by that paper’s competitors in the northern region. Think of the ability to discover who is getting what out of council deals, and any scandals that emerge. All that would go.

National journalists’ training is based on the local papers—they are the training grounds for quality journalism. That is where journalists learn their craft. If the functions are to be shifted from the local paper to a hub somewhere else in the country, the all-round experience of producing a newspaper, producing and editing news and developing the argument is going to be gone, and gone from a diminished number of journalists. There was a well-beaten track from local journalism to Fleet street. It provided the training ground for the quality journalism in Fleet street, but that is going to be undercut and will disappear.

This morning, the editor of the Grimsby Telegraph argued with me that at least her journalists are now more multi-skilled. Well, they can take photographs, deal with websites and upload news—that is certainly true. That could not have been done by my generation of journalists. I was at the glamour end of the profession, not the literate, intelligent end. Nevertheless, although they are more multi-skilled, there are fewer of them and they have less ability to inquire into what is really going on behind the scenes.

All that is easy to describe, and I have just done so, but in a debate such as this we must ask: what is the alternative? What do we do about it? That is the singular deficiency of all the debates on this issue that I have heard, read or seen over the years. That is why we want, and the National Union of Journalists is demanding, a short, sharp, quick and strong inquiry to discover the roots of the problem and offer solutions. We cannot develop them here and now, although the hon. Member for Maldon (Mr Whittingdale) has tried to offer some, but we must have an inquiry into the whole issue.

That brings me to the BBC. I do not and cannot support, and I do not think we should support, any proposal for top-slicing the BBC. Everyone wants to top-slice the BBC: ITV wants a bit, local media want a bit and local television stations want a bit. The BBC licence fee must be there to support quality production in this country. That is its purpose and that is what it should be devoted to.

[Mr Whittingdale]

The Select Committee had two potential solutions, one of which was top-slicing the licence fee to set up public service reporting. The hon. Gentleman is right that the BBC was opposed to that. However, the solution I was setting out was not top-slicing. I was talking about the BBC itself commissioning content. The BBC would continue to use the licence fee for itself, without giving it to any other body. As long as it remains within the control of the BBC, I do not think that there is an objection.

[Austin Mitchell]

There are alternative ways for the BBC to help out the newspapers financially. It now observes a requirement to buy stories from the local television stations—indeed, it has begun to buy stories from Estuary TV in my constituency. That is a good thing. There is no reason why the BBC should not buy stories from local newspaper journalists, provided that the money goes to the journalists, not to the directors and chief executives of the newspaper.