A regional daily editor has taken a council communications boss to task for describing his newspaper as a “local rag” on Twitter.
Michael Beard, editor of Newsquest-owned daily The Argus in Brighton , says his paper was libelled in a tweet by Brighton and Hove City Council communications chief John Shewell.
Mr Shewell had initially published the tweet in response to a story in The Argus suggesting the authority may introduce a tourist tax.
He tweeted the words: ‘Local rag runs ridiculous line that Brighton and Hove City Council thinking of introducing “tourist tax er…no we’re not’.
Mr Beard responded in an email which was subsequently leaked to blogger Michael Taggart, who published it on his site.
In it, Mr Beard tells Mr Shewell that he has taken legal advice on the matter as he felt the paper had been libelled.
The email raads: “As to your comment describing the Argus as a ‘local rag’, the advice from our company lawyer is that the tweet as a whole is defamatory in that it characterises The Argus (and therefore the Editor and individual members of staff) as a ‘rag’ that carelessly or incompetently publishes false or misleading information and is not to be relied on.
“Our concern is that you have spread false and insulting information about The Argus apparently designed to discredit us and our staff. I am taking advice on how to protect our employees from these unjustified attacks.”
In his email, the editor says the paper had reported that the city’s new Green cabinet said they would investigate the creation of a tourist tax if there was support for it.
Mr Beard had not returned HTFP’s calls at the time of going to press.
Mr Shewell’s tweets remain on his Twitter page and he has posted several subsequent tweets about the matter, one of them even asking if anybody knows a good lawyer.
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Nobody comes out of this too well, but I read the original Argus story and the key point is the one that comes three paragraphs from the end of your article.
Nowhere in the Argus story does it say the council is considering a green tax. It says some traders and hoteliers are calling for it and quotes (accurately as far as I can tell) a councillor saying he’d look at it if there was widespread support.
Quite why Mr Shewell decided to go off on one is a mystery to me, and I can see why Mr Beard is annoyed. It wasn’t just a Tweet, he also issued an official Brighton and Hove Council press release rubbishing the story.
It was stupid to make a threat to sue for libel, which will obviously never happen, and it’s given Mr Shewell the opporunity to jump on the Twitter bandwagon and turn himself into free speech crusader rather than a press officer who failed to read the story properly.
If I was him, I’d remember the press officer should never become the story.
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Crikey, Michael Beard, toughen up. All of us who work in local papers have our papers so described. The ‘local rag’ is now a general term for local papers. You hear the term everywhere. I would be more concerned about the “tourist” story, and not some mildly pejorative description of the newspaper. Isn’t there a difference in emphasis between the “Green cabinet said they would investigate the creation of a tourist tax IF there was support for it,” and Mr Shewell’s interpretation of the article that the council “IS thinking of introducing a tourist tax”?
Incidentally, I used to work for the Tiverton Gazette which the locals called the Tiverton Guts-ache! We never sued…
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Other popular names for Brighton’s paper among the local population include The Argues (from a typo), The Ragus, The A*us and The Ars*gas. What you going to do about that, Michael Beard? Take your entire (admittedly dwindling) readership to court?
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Think Mr Beard has probably over-reacted on this occasion, but honestly, those smug council press department spin doctors sitting on huge salaries for not much work do get up your nose sometimes…
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Moral of this story – We can dish it out, but we can’t take it.
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Ridiculous response from an editor to what was a harmless dig. How can you ‘libel’ a newspaper anyway ? Mr Beard should try to ignore such trivialities in future – though, to be fair, the pressure of working at the helm of a provincial daily paper in today’s torturous climate would make a saint snap.
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I always thought “local rag” was an affectionate rib-dig. Either that or I have misinterpreted references to a number of titles I have worked on down the years.
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I think, and this is only an expression of my opinion on a matter of public interest, that threatening to use a largely discredited law which is not only unjust but also against the public interest and which is also widely despised by publishers, journalists, authors, academics and performers (because it stands in the way of free speech and debate) would have been anathema to any newspaperman and I would argue that an editor threatening to use such a law, far and above any of the comments made by critics, does more of a discredit to a newspaper than the term ‘local rag’ or unjustified cries of inaccuracy.
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“How can you ‘libel’ a newspaper anyway ?” asks Subbo.
Err, defamation can be committed against corporate bodies or companies by doing down their reputation, can’t it?
(Like Jo Brand on “Have I Got A Bit More News For You”, broadcast on BBC2 last Saturday, accusing the Ludlow Advertiser of a profanity in a front-page typo, when as HTFP itself reported at the time it was in fact the since-discontinued Ludlow Journal).
But that’s just a technicality. I’m with others in thinking the description ‘local rag’ is hardly the worst epithet I’ve heard in my years in journalism.
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Absolutely ridiculous and completely over the top.
A rag is probably one of the nicer things I have heard The Argus described as recently…
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As a PR officer myself (not for Brighton council), I have never managed to get any response from Mr Beard (he doesn’t even acknowledge emails), so well done to John Shewell for getting a response. If nothing else, it proves Michael Beard exists.
He should however, get out of his ivory tower (Mr Beard, that is) and realise he is part of the community, instead of publishing relentelessly negative, misleading stories about the local council (haven’t seen this one but The Argus has plenty of ‘form’). Fair enough when the council gets something wrong but the Argus never even appears to consider the possibility that sometimes the council gets it right.
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Davy, this site is for journalists. Don’t you have one of your own? Darksidehugepension.co.uk
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I used to be a journalist so I guess I’m allowed to read HTFP?
I do like the idea of darksidehugepension.co.uk as a site for us “communications professionals”. Maybe I’ll start it….
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yes, you’re allowed
only joshing
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