I received the following request from the News of the World the other day.
“We would like you to tell us:
1. The amount you are paid for any consultancy work you do and which companies it is for. This would include the amount you are paid for being part of any advisory groups or boards.
2. The amount you are paid for any directorships you hold, and which companies they are with.
3. The size of any significant shareholdings you possess and the size of the dividend they received last year.
Like the News of the World, I’m sure you will agree that when such information is freely available, it will help to ensure the utmost public trust in an institution that has been the backbone of our democratic process for hundreds of years.
Anyone from whom we do not receive full information will be listed accordingly.”
It’s often not worth responding to this type of request because it usually results in a distorted news item but this time I couldn’t resit responding as follows:
“Dear Kevin
You haven’t been reading the papers or listening to TV/radio recently! I have been advocating the same very publicly for some time and my pay from Future Heathrow has been published since I took the position in 2005. It is £29,000 pa. I have no shares of any type or directorships etc. http://www.futureheathrow.org/page.php?id=3
If you use this information please also convey my view that full transparency is the key to this problem. I think it also applies to some other trades/professions – lawyers, journalists, editors and owners included. For example newspapers don’t even put the name of the editor on the paper! You might like to see my entry on the Lords blog about transparency.
Good luck with your campaign on transparency but please DO NOT forget to include yourselves.
Clive.”
All they published was a hate filled editorial implying that all Lords were useless! So the blog strikes back!
While I’m sure a little more transparency with the newspaper industry wouldn’t be a bad thing, surely there is a difference between a the Lords, a legislature and paid for by the public, and a newspaper, privately funded and minimal in its impact upon our daily lives.
Well, you have limited sympathy, as Rupert Murdoch wants to get rid of both the House of Lords, and the BBC, as they are both bastions of independent thought which are not easily susceptible to his need to exert monopoly control of the UK media…
Mind you, I do come back to the point, having worked in marketing, that if everyone who said “I’m not influenced by advertising / PR / sponsorship deals.. ” did not have their behaviour changed, albeit subconsciously, and often by a marginal amount, then companies would not bother to spend that money…
It is all very well you saying “I don’t respond to junk mail..” – that may be true in your case. But the population at large is ‘influenced’ by it, and even if that just means that, statistically, only the 1% at the ‘margin’ buy something as a result, that is evidence that the campaign has changed behaviour and made it a profitable investment.
Bob Jones: I don’t agree a newspaper is “minimal in its impact upon our daily lives”. Tabloids in particular can have a huge impact with their campaigns, and in which the party they back at general elections. Surely the public is entitled to know who is bankrolling the papers so that we can see where they are coming from?
Dear Clive, I have just tried twice to post a comment here but as soon as I press send a white page appears saying “discarded”.
So, I hope to get my message to you via my new blog
BLAIR FOUNDATION WATCH – A Blairite’s blog
Please see:
SATURDAY, 27 JUNE 2009
Message to Lord Soley: Call for guidelines on legislation against mainstream media and online libel and slander
http://blairfoundation.blogspot.com/2009/06/message-to-lord-soley-call-for.html#links
Kindest regards,
Ingrid