Council's 'political' stories

A Chatbox submission, AudlemOnline believes, deserves a wider audience, particularly after an earlier news story from Cheshire East. Bit o' Politics says:

"AudlemOnline is what is called a trusted source in that those who read it have a high level of trust in the content. But that has to be carefully protected and means that news items have to be without bias. Otherwise readers will start to consider whether AudlemOnline has particular editorial objectives which they are trying to encourage in readers through their content. That could cause them to doubt the content or click away.

"The recent articles from Cheshire East breach these important rules for a trusted source. They are going way beyond information and are now little short of spin. Today's article "Victory over speculative developers" is the worst by far. You have printed an article under news which includes, for instance, the statement "It means Cheshire East's countryside should now be protected for the next five years against unsustainable speculative developers who are driven to build new houses purely for profit."

"Putting aside for one moment the fact this is wrong (the rules have changed very little and the council still has to follow the Government's growth and development policies) it is very clearly spin. There are plenty of examples such as "fight to fend off unwelcome, unsustainable and unplanned development in the Borough"- an odd thing to say when you are actually the planning authority which decides whether developments are allowed.

"Whilst the item is attributed to Cheshire East Council it is under news and alongside other largely factual and local information items so can be expected to be trusted by readers. I'm afraid there is this morning a press officer sat in Cheshire East laughing over their cornflakes.

"You should say to Cheshire East that if they wish to use your news item column then they need to remove bias and spin from their articles. Otherwise you need to put these articles in a separate section making clear they are written by Cheshire East and are opinion."

AudlemOnline says: We agree with pretty well every word above which, curiously, is why we published it under Cheshire East Council's name. It is important, we believe, that anyone concerned about a future 'speculative' development in local countryside can quote the council's very own words at some time in the future.

As Bit o' Politics will know, we also publish highly critical articles about the Council, such as yesterday's excerpt from Private Eye. We too, however, have noticed how recent press releases from the council have become increasingly political but assume that readers will recognise this as those articles are always credited to the council. We are grateful to Bit o' Politics for underlining the political nature of these stories.

This article is from our news archive. As a result pictures or videos originally associated with it may have been removed and some of the content may no longer be accurate or relevant.