Local newspaper editors' survey says public bodies growing more secretive

A survey of local newspaper editors in the UK by the Newspaper Society has raised concerns about growing secretiveness amongst public bodies.

According to the NS survey conducted as part of next week's Local Newspaper Week, 78 per cent of respondents said had become more difficult to get information from local council, police and health authorities in recent years; just 10 per cent said getting information from such bodies had become easier.

The survey, which was completed by 63 editors from a mix of daily and weekly local and regional newspapers, suggests that 35 per cent of editors have had a reporter prevented from attending or reporting details of a public meeting with 85 per cent of those challenging those obstructions.

On average, from those titles surveyed, a local newspaper attends 12 meetings of public bodies a month and publishes around 30 stories from those meetings. The average local paper will have a reporter covering a criminal court on an average of 2.3 days out of five, it suggested.

"The findings of this survey point towards an extremely worrying trend of increased secrecy among public bodies making it harder for local newspapers to perform their scrutinising role on behalf of their readers," says Lynne Anderson, NS communications director, in a statement.

"Local newspapers act as a watchdog for democracy by shining a spotlight on the workings of public bodies and it cannot be right for this vital function to be undermined."

The society's concerns echo those voiced in a recent report for the Society of Editors, which suggests that the current state of Freedom of Information legislation and court reporting procedures require further development and reform to assist local media in their role as public watchdogs and to support public service reporting initiatives such as that proposed by the Press Association.

The survey did provide some more positive figures in relation to Freedom of Information requests made by local newspapers, suggesting that the average paper has submitted 16 requests in the past year and has been successful in 81 per cent of these. In addition, 21 per cent of respondents said they had used digital technologies, including Twitter, to provide live coverage of public authority meetings, suggesting that local media are looking for new ways to increase their coverage of public bodies.

Is this your experience of working at a local newspaper? Let us know in the comments below.

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