The Dragon Says: Hold The Front Page, We’ve Scooped A Political Advert

Published on: 7 Dec, 2019
Updated on: 9 Dec, 2019

The Surrey Advertiser, Friday December 6

If, as some say, perception is all, what should we make of the Surrey Advertiser’s front news page yesterday?

At a glance, readers might well get the impression that the venerable Surrey Ad is supporting the Lib Dems. A full-page advert under the Surrey Advertiser banner is part of the wrap-around supplement.

The ostensible endorsement is raising eyebrows. The only printed local newspaper for Guildford has sold its front page to a political party in the final week of an epoch-making General Election where the battle for the local parliamentary seat appears to be on a knife-edge.

“So what?” you might say. It is the Surrey “Advertiser”. Local journalism is in a parlous state, financially. If a political party wants to pay money to advertise, why not? And it is an advert: it says clearly, “advertisement feature”.

But does that make it okay?

Years ago, not long after the Guildford Greenbelt Group started up, The Guildford Dragon NEWS ran an advert for them. But, on reflection, we became uncomfortable about taking such ads, even for a group unaligned with a national party. It jarred with our stance of political independence, which we highly value.

Although we could have really used the income, we decided not to take any further adverts from political parties.

And when we were asked to run an advert for Wisley Property Investment Limited we decided that too was not suitable, because the political element of any decision on Wisley planning cannot be denied.

Recently, the Lib Dems have been criticised heavily by real local newspapers for distributing fake localised “Gazettes”. These are not newspapers: they are part of a crude political campaign literature pretending to be news.

So is this their next step, a decision to pay for such an advert in this way, in a legitimate paper?

How will that leave Lib Dems and loyal readers of the Surrey Ad feeling? We’d be interested to know. Please use the Leave a Reply feature below.

Responses to The Dragon Says: Hold The Front Page, We’ve Scooped A Political Advert

John Perkins Reply

December 7, 2019 at 7:42 pm

Today I received a second copy of the Lib Dem fake news paper. They must be spending an awful lot of money on their campaign.

The only possible conclusion is that they believe they can buy the result.
Helen Avery Reply

December 7, 2019 at 7:59 pm

How sad to see the Lib Dems resort to such tactics. Every day, we receive leaflets from them, some days there are two or three Lib Dem flyers. What a waste of money and has the opposite effect for which they were intended. We shall no longer be voting for them, sickened by their tactics.
George Potter Reply

December 7, 2019 at 8:40 pm

I find this very interesting. Some local newspapers elsewhere in the country complained that newspapers produced and delivered by political parties undermined trust in the impartiality of local newspapers, yet most of the local newspapers which complained had previously accepted wraparound adverts like this one on behalf of the Conservative party.

Now that political parties have taken the logical step of moving to paid (and clearly labelled) advertisements in local newspapers we see criticism that this too is somehow “not okay” and undermining the “political independence” of the local press.

As a political campaigner, I’d really appreciate it if journalists could come to a firm conclusion one way or another. I’m happy to accept an argument that it’s wrong for political parties to distribute their own newspapers, or that it’s wrong for them to advertise in existing ones, but it’s very difficult to accept the validity of both arguments simultaneously.

George Potter is a Lib Dem borough councillor for Burpham
Alasdair Nicol Reply

December 7, 2019 at 9:09 pm

It’s not just the Lib Dems that are buying wrap-arounds. Here’s an article examining the practice in the 2017 election.

https://www.buzzfeed.com/jimwaterson/how-the-conservatives-are-using-local-adverts-to-get-around

I think George Potter is offering a false dichotomy. No one is saying political parties shouldn’t advertise in newspapers, it’s the wrap-arounds they object to.

Personally, I don’t have a problem with the Guildford Gazette, but publishing a Mid-Hampshire Gazette in the area covered by the Basingstoke Gazette was more suspect.
Jim Allen Reply

December 7, 2019 at 9:18 pm

All political parties should be restricted to one piece of A4 literature plus one 10 page booklet nationally, to be delivered on a day after registration. This would then make it equal to all participants.