CONGRATULATIONS on your Proper Papers Not Propaganda campaign.
When I moved to the Hammersmith and Fulham borough, I thought the h&f news was the local paper. There was nothing to indicate it was not.
OK, the reporting was blatantly biased, but I put down to the editor being a right-wing sympathiser.
Surely if h&f news is actually the council newsletter, this should be made very clear on the masthead and in the news coverage so readers are not deceived in the way I was.
The Tories make the argument (letters, April 9) that it would cost them more to place their statutory public notices as advertisements in the local paper than it does to publish them in the h&f news.
I find this hard to believe. Are they really sure that the cost of running and distributing a newspaper is less than placing these ads?
Well, it seems there is much more to it than this weasely argument. In the next paragraph, the letter talks about how the council is raising money from external advertising placed in the h&f news.
Clearly h&f news has an unfair advantage in this, as advertisers will be more likely to place their ads with a newspaper which is the mouthpiece of people who control public spending budgets in the borough?
And to look at it from the point of view of the local community, the Chronicle is the genuine local newspaper. Publishing something which masquerades as a local paper out of our council tax and going after the same advertisers as the real local paper is indefensible.
It's time the Tory council remembered the basic rules of fair play and left publishing to the experts. Propaganda should be paid for through their own party funds.
ANNE BRUCE
Larden Road Hammersmith
