
Northern Echo
ALL editors face
accusations of political bias. The claims fly from all directions –
Conservatives, Labour, Lib Dems, UKIP, you name it – especially at election
time. I’ve always taken the view that if they all think we’re unfair, we must
be getting it more or less right, and I do my best to rise above the pettiness
of it all.
But, having resisted the temptation for quite a
while, it is time to go public with the position taken by Northern Powerhouse
minister James Wharton, the Conservative MP for Stockton South, who refuses
point blank to have anything to do with The Northern Echo. He refuses to take
our calls or provide us with answers to our questions and has told me to inform
my reporters not to call him. When I wrote to ask for an explanation on October
4, he replied in writing that it was due to “the Echo’s weekly attacks on me”
and the paper’s “continual political bias”.
The timing was hugely ironic because, that week,
I happened to be dealing with complaints from Independent and Liberal Democrat
supporters about my decision to give Richmondshire’s Conservative MP, Rishi
Sunak, his own weekly column in our sister title, the Darlington & Stockton
Times.
Naturally, I asked Mr Wharton for evidence of
the “weekly attacks” we’d launched, and duly received back links to a single
issue – the recent controversy over Mr Wharton not attending an emergency
Commons debate on the steel crisis. Mr Wharton had responded to criticism from
North-East Labour MPs by tweeting: “On my way up to Teesside actually doing things rather than showboating.”
The Northern Echo’s editorial comment relating
to the row said: “To suggest that an emergency debate on the future of so many
jobs is ‘showboating’ isn’t clever. It’s disrespectful to the House of Commons
– and to the community at risk of a devastating economic blow.”
So that’s it – the “evidence” of The Northern
Echo’s weekly attacks on James Wharton. What the MP didn’t send me were the
links to The Northern Echo’s previous editorial, welcoming his appointment as
Northern Powerhouse minister as a positive move, nor did he mention the full
page of editorial we’d given him to write in glowing terms about the benefits
of the Northern Powerhouse initiative.
What Mr Wharton fails to grasp is that criticism
is part of being a politician. It was opposition MPs who called him “pathetic”
over the emergency steel debate, not The Northern Echo, and the region’s other
news organisations also published the criticism, not just us.
Since then, we’ve covered last week’s withering
attack on Mr Wharton by Middlesbrough Football Club chairman Steve Gibson, who
took to The Times, no less, to call the Stockton South MP “a clown” and “a
joke” over his handling of the steel crisis. What were we supposed to do?
Ignore the fact that one of Teesside’s most respected and influential
entrepreneurs had launched such an outspoken, national attack? Of course not –
and, again, the other regional titles covered it too.
What was important was to apply balance to our
coverage by giving Mr Wharton the opportunity to give his perspective. As
always, his response was the standard “I won’t comment to the Echo due to its
weekly attacks on me.”.
We might easily have left it at that but we
didn’t – we afforded him balance by taking the quotes he’d given to the Press
Association. We published his rejection of Mr Gibson’s attack, pointing out
that the Boro chairman had never spoken to him, and his declaration
that Teesside was doing well.
Over the 17 years of my editorship, we’ve
criticised – and praised – politicians of all colours when the need has arisen.
It is true that The Northern Echo’s editorial
comment sided, on balance, with the Labour Party at the last election but it
was hardly a ringing endorsement rammed down the throats of our readers on the
front page. It was a thoughtful view, reflecting on the disproportionate public
sector cuts the North-East had faced during David Cameron’s first term in power
while repeating the doubts we’d regularly expressed about Ed Miliband’s
leadership. When a newspaper expresses an opinion on every other publication
day, it would seem odd to me not to express an opinion on perhaps the most
crucial day in five years.
Since the election, The Northern Echo has urged
our local authorities to come together behind the Northern Powerhouse
initiative and campaign for devolved powers, accepting that the price to be
paid was elected mayors. Oh, and I’ve resisted the opposition calls to stop Mr
Sunak’s column in our sister paper, because I think it’s an important part of
the political balance we strive to achieve across all of our titles.
None of this is intended as one of our “weekly
attacks” on Mr Wharton, but there is only so long you can go on trying to
engage with someone while keeping quiet about a prominent politician’s official
position of non co-operation.
In my view, it is important that The Northern
Echo’s readers know that, when articles relating to Mr Wharton don’t include a
comment from him, it has never been for the want of trying. It is important for
them to know that the Northern Powerhouse minister has blacklisted the only
paper with “Northern” in its title – a title which has championed the north for
nearly 150 years and was recently credited with playing an important role in
the campaign to bring the Hitachi train-building factory to the region.
James Wharton is an ambitious politician – but
heaven help him if he ever has to deal with a truly hostile press.
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