A government minister has stopped writing for a regional daily over a story it ran about her, according to one of the newspaper’s columnists.
Education Secretary Nicky Morgan, pictured left, has reportedly discontinued her occasional column for the Leicester Mercury after it followed up a story in the national press which said she hadn’t ruled out sending her son to private school.
The Mercury’s Fred Leicester column, written by an anonymous staffer on the paper, has now claimed Mrs Morgan has “withdrawn her labour” from the newspaper.
Fred claimed the paper’s newsdesk had been informed of the Loughborough MP’s decision by one of her press officers following a series of discussion about the private school story.
He said the press officer had called the Mercury the day after the story was published last month, adding: “There was a long conversation with our education reporter. It seemed the press officer struggled to find a line or even a morsel within a line which was untrue or wrong, only that we shouldn’t have run the story at all, perhaps.
“The conversation ended with the press officer making a veiled threat that Mrs Morgan would no longer write her occasional Mercury column. And then there was another conversation, with one of the news editors, when the threat turned into reality. So there you are.
“I have to wonder – and the Mercury lawyers insist I make it clear that this it is me merely wondering and not stating a fact – if Nicky Morgan EVER wrote her occasional Mercury political column or if it was one of her spads, but that’s just me and my eternal cynicism.
“Still, if you are pining for that column and you have missed it, that is the story of why it’s missing.”
Fred added: “I’m not the kind of journalist who believes the children of well-known people or politicians are fair game for a story. They’re not.
“But if Mrs Morgan, the secretary of state in charge of educating the next generation, wants to argue that where she sends her son to school is not a story, and newspapers like ours should not be troubling ourselves with those details, then I fear she may be disappointed. Because it is a story. It is always a story.”
He added that he had always considered Mrs Morgan to be a “down to earth-ish” and “decent” person who has “taken the town to her heart”.
HTFP has asked Mrs Morgan’s office for a comment on the issue.
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Who’s the loser here?
Mrs morgan clearly as her views will no longer be heard and the spotlight of publicity and PR which all politicians crave will have moved off her.
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Good orchestrated comeback from the paper in this article (allegedly!) well done!
I for one will be sad to see the loss of such an esteemed stateswoman’s views. Titbits such as ‘why we should work like the Chinese’ and ‘learning by rote – it never did the 70s any harm’.
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Brilliant. Hats off to the The Mercury. Proper journalism exposes politician as a complete hypocrite. Result. Politician hates story but can find nothing wrong with story. Result. Columnist gets great hard-hitting column exposing politician as even bigger hypocrite. Result. Politican spits dummy out meaning readers are not subject to her worthless witterings any longer. Result.
What’s not to like?
Journalism is still alive. Leicester Mercury I salute you. Many thanks.
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Of course it was a story – toys out the pram!
Don’t you just hate it when press officers phone up to complain about something that is factually correct?
Yet for reporter, this can still backfire.
Because they are not getting the backing they need
Happily that plainly wasn’t the case here.
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Why do local papers run columns from their MPs?
Who the hell wants to read their opinions and propaganda.
I don’t think the people who matter here, the readers, have lost anything.
The paper has lost some free copy to help it fill I guess, so vital.
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Fabulous. Well done Leicester Mercury and Fred. There’s life in the old dog yet (the old dog being local journalism. Not Fred. Or, indeed Nicky Morgan)
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Good riddance to her column. What use is an “occasional” column anyway? The only reason in having a column is to encourage readers to come back to it, to be delighted/enraged/amused/informed etc. To do that, readers need to know it will appear at the same place at the same time. “Occasional” columns for politicians are vanity for them, part-time toadying by the paper and no use at all in trying to rebuild readership, which is what we are all trying to do, right?
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I’m sure the readers of the Leicester Mercury will be utterly devastated, gathering in huge protest groups that place its offices under siege.
No. Thought not.
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MP’s columns are just a free bit of propaganda, usually to be found in papers which fail to actually scrutinise their MP in anything like the same way they do for their local council.
I know of one MP who’s wife writes his column, and made accusations of political bias when the threat to withdraw it was made because the MP rarely did anything in the constituency. An old example but still makes the point.
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Leicester is on a roll: King Richard III is found under a car park; the Foxes are in with more than a sniff at the Premier League title; the city boasts one of the world’s top rock bands in Kasabian – and the local paper is clearly still an exponent of real journalism…
What are house prices like up there?
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My local weekly devotes a page every week to ‘columns’ by the area’s three MPs. It’s the most tedious, self-serving tripe you could ever imagine. I now regard the page as a waste of newsprint, a rock-solid turn-off for all but the MPs themselves, and a lost opportunity to cram six more local stories into the paper.
This woman is typical of Labour MPs – hypocrites who advocate one set of standards for the ‘ordinaries’ in life, and a separate set for ‘elitists’ like themselves. This was a legitimate story exposing her for what she is.
Her withdrawal of labour – big laugh – will be no loss to the Mercury at all. In fact, she is denying herself an outlet for her propaganda, thus confirming the level of intelligence we have come to expect from our parliamentary representatives.
Her only consolation is that no-one will have been reading the rubbish anyway. Byeee! And don’t come back…
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Columns from MPs might just be acceptable as space fillers for desperate rags if other parties were given space to respond. Otherwise it is just free propaganda, when the papers should be charging advertising rates.
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Never a fan of Nicky Morgan’s in the first place and thought there wasn’t much could have lowered her in my already low estimation.
But this has.
Well done to Fred Leicester and the Leicester Mercury – simple, honest but devastatingly powerful local journalism. Readers should be proud of their paper’s stance on this.
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@Brassington. Nicky Morgan is a Tory. Agree with your views about most MPs, though.
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