Lib Dems threaten legal action over Hackney Today ‘propaganda rag’

Is this the end of the Town Hall’s ‘Pravda’? Photograph: Claude Crommelin
Plans to restrict publications like Hackney Today cleared another hurdle this week when they were approved by the House of Lords.
Labour-run Hackney Council publishes Hackney Today fortnightly but is set to be forced to trim this to just four issues per year.
Conservative Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government Eric Pickles has branded local authority publications “Town Hall Pravdas”.
Hackney Liberal Democrat spokesperson Tony Harms said Hackney Council is “using a much needed half a million pounds of public money for political purposes”.
Mr Harms added: “That money could be used in the discretionary fund to alleviate benefit cuts in hardship cases.
“And it seriously damages independent criticism in the local press.
“The irony is that the Labour Party have made exactly the same complaints about East End Life, another propaganda rag in Tower Hamlets, but not one of theirs. Once the Bill receives royal assent and if the council ignores the code, we will be looking closely at possible court action.”
Hackney Council says it plans to review its publication arrangements when the new statute passes.
Update at 2.27pm on 23 January 2014:
A council spokesperson said: “We are aware of forthcoming changes to the law which could affect the publication of Hackney Today and when this new statute is passed we will review our publication arrangements.
“We have always told ministers that we would be happy to stop publishing Hackney Today each fortnight if they dropped the requirement to print statutory notices in a newspaper. At present Hackney Today is the most cost effective way of doing this for local taxpayers.”
Eric Pickles and the Hackney Citizen – a marriage made in heaven!
Do feel free to expand on any vested interests, editor?
@ Jaque Carvalho – We have no affiliation to any political party. – Ed.
I wonder if the Citizen would be willing to post council notices for free? After all, we’re all in this together and I’m sure most people would rather spend council tax on council services as opposed to lining the pockets of local papers.
@Texpat78: As a monthly publication the Hackney Citizen is not legally eligible to publish public notices – we would need to print at least fortnightly. The Local Audit and Accountability Bill or similar future legislation may remove the statutory requirement for councils to pay for public notices in local newspapers – see Local Government Lawyer. – Ed.
Good riddance to Hackney Today! Shamefully political…not even the Labour backbenchers get a look-in, and certainly nothing done by anyone in the opposition.
For as much as I support the existence of public sector media as complimentary to the commercial media, I think that Hackney Today is utterly abysmal.
I can’t remember the last time it had any content that was worth recommending.
Its editing is neither fish nor foul with not enough depth and detail to inform nor sensational enough to entertain.
Worse still it does not report the £1,000,000,000+/year business of the Council but simply publishes its own press releases which include the ones that no other editor would consider publishing because they are so utterly un-newsworthy and are of absolutely no interest to anybody except their corporate authors, and they in turn many times don’t give a damn either.
For instance, how are the 2010 3-year Street Markets Strategy and the 2011 5-year Libraries & Archives Development Strategy progressing?
There is no reporting anywhere about either, and so the question is are we by accident or on purpose ill-informed?
It should be the job of the public sector media, both print and online, to keep us Electors informed, but both actively choose not to do so, and so the answer to the question of on purpose or in error by the corporate director on down through the many ranks of managers including the editors of the Hackney Today and hackney.gov.uk is – on purpose.
https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/library_archives_development_str#incoming-458467
Hackney Today is so completely irredeemable that despite fundamentally opposing its closure because more information being better than less and the market being best served with the widest possible offer, I actually don’t care one way or another.