Tory Mayoral hopeful Lee Rotherham has written to the Advertising Standards Authority this morning about Ken Livingstone's latest propaganda newspaper:
"Last night, I received a copy of The Londoner magazine unsolicited through my letter box. It is dated March 2007, and can also be found in electronic format on the Mayor’s website.
This purports to provide “news”. On its launch, in a press release the Mayor of London said that, “The Londoner newspaper contains lots of useful information for people who live and work the capital.”
This morning I discussed the content of the publication with someone who has attended a NATO course in psychological operations, who indicated that it appears to “primarily be a method of providing biased, politically-orientated material for the purpose of supporting the incumbent of the mayoralty.” In his words, it is “a publicly-funded propaganda sheet rather than a newspaper in the traditional Western sense of the term”. He added, “There is editorial slant, and there is outright political marketing. This is the latter.”
I have forwarded a copy of the paper to an associate, who was a dissident in the former Soviet Union and spent a number of years imprisoned there, for follow-on comments.
In particular, I draw your attention to the following aspects, drawn from a rapid analysis:
- Name frequency. At a quick count, “Mayor” appears 21 times and variants of “Ken Livingstone” appear 10 times. This is a simple trick of repetition for brand recognition.
- The Mayor is given five opportunities to provide short in-piece quotes.
- There are eleven cases where the Mayor is given opportunities to provide lengthy quotes, or where articles directly support stated policy positions.
- The lead article on page one would successfully operate as a press release from the Mayor’s office in support of his budget and policies, and acts as a lead to his editorial.
- Key word analysis highlights the following examples of editorial bias in article construction: “vowed”, “despite”, “enjoy”, “all” (as an emphatic), “advantage”, and “benefit”.
- There are some eleven instances of quotes from third parties being used in a supportive manner; and just one instance of quotes to oppose policy.
- Two full pages are bought by a Mayoral Agency as overt advertising
- Quangos. Transport for London gets four name checks (one as “Your Transport for London”); three quangocrats supply articles.
Our contention, therefore, is that this publication performs neither the public service role nor the public information role which it pretends.
If there was any doubt about bias, 29 Across in the Crossword rather spells out the hidden agenda. It reads, “Fidel Castro’s Island Republic”.
It may be that this falls beyond your remit. I wonder, then, in such an instance if you could tell me from previous experience whether such might fall within the Electoral Commission’s bag? Putting out such strongly biased material during a policy consultation period may be in breach of the law in its own right.
Yours faithfully,
Lee Rotherham."
Related links: TfL spends £78,000,000 pa on "communications" and Roger Evans AM complains to ASA about Livingstone's ad campaign
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