# 2 July 2011 (views of Mike Heenan, Leader of Stafford Borough Council)

Don’t be hacked off with all journalists

Politicians never come very high in popularity contests. But neither do journalists.

After recent events that have, at the moment, focused on the News of the World, I would imagine the opinion of journalism is at an extremely low point.

The hacking of vulnerable people’s phones is not journalism anyway but an illegal and deplorable practice. I am convinced many more national newspapers will soon be implicated in at best, unsavoury tactics, and at worst, law breaking.

But before you tar all reporters with the same brush spare a thought for our local journalists. The local press has had a hard time of late. Like many businesses they have struggled in the economic climate. They also have to compete with the rise in online media.

Yet they go about their work giving a voice to those who may not have any other channel to be heard and holding politicians and public organisations to account. And yes, I do disagree with what they write on occasions.

They also have a very important community role - and our local press does that very well.

For example, when we launched a campaign to highlight that horrible menace of dog fouling, it was through articles in local newspapers that we obtained information of offenders and problem spots in the borough.

And recently a local reporter spent the day with one of our parking wardens to get a taste of their role. It would have been very easy to have ducked a job like this, to have written a sensationalist article, or to have just used old myths and clichés.

But it was a balanced article concentrating on fact and personal experience. A fair and accurate piece of journalism.

 It is this which I suggest separates the journalists of our local media from those who get a story by hacking a phone.