Politicians and journalists are a bit like love and marriage; you can't have one without the other. Politicians are nothing without the press. The press are nothing without stories. However, it is a marriage of convenience rather than love. Politicians do not like being in thrall to journalists; neither do journalists like having their stories being interfered with. The carrot and stick that the government use to keep the press under control is public notices and the advertising revenue that goes with that. If the journalists play nicely, they'll get to advertise stuff on swine flu, planning applications, dates of public meetings etc. If they don't play nicely, that gets withdrawn. With the national press this doesn't work entirely; they still get revenue from big private firms' adverts, but for small local presses this is their lifeblood. Local government is usually their single biggest advertiser and without that revenue they will struggle very badly. This is why local papers tend to be blander in their reporting and fill their columns with endless pictures of the provost presenting the latest road safety prize to wee Calum McDougall down Whifflet way. They do occasionally show their teeth and when they do they can be lethal. The backing of Jean Turner by the Kirkintilloch Herald in 2003 was one of the major contributing factors to her election as an MSP and the government has not forgotten it.
Or have they? I read with incredulity today that the Scottish Government was planning to end the mandatory requirement to print public notices in papers. Instead, they can be displayed online. This will save £6 million of much needed public cash goes the argument.
I confess that I am absolutely flabbergasted at this. Not at the injustice of it, because lots of people do not have access to the internet, but at the sheer boneheaded political stupidity of it. You're five months, maybe less, from an election. What better strategy than to administer a kick up the backside of every local press from the Dundee Courier to the Airdrie and Coatbridge Advertiser?
I predict this is not going to last long. Even now as I speak, local presses will be reaching for those pictures of the provost that could scare the weans away from the fireplace. They will start printing all the stories that they had been sitting on for fear of losing the government's custom. Instead of 'Caring Councillors Come to Aid of Local Pensioners,' it will be ' Big Bertie and Busty Blonde Basement Romp in Council Chambers'. It'll be over in a matter of weeks.
You have been warned...
