I’ve just watched Andrew Gilligan on Channel 4’s Dispatches present a compelling story about a property developer who donated £5,000 to the Manchester Labour Party a few weeks before being chosen as preferred bidder for a casino in the city. None of the councillors involved declared an interest, although they were subsequently cleared of wrongdoing by the Standards Board for England.
Problem is, the story is best part of three years old, as this BBC News report shows. There was no mention that the story had been widely reported several years ago. In fact, anyone surfing Google could have uncovered it in less than three seconds.
I’m tempted to observe that the story was a little bit sexed up. But that would be a cheap shot at Gilligan’s expense. So I won’t.
Note: This post has been edited. Someone claiming to be Andrew Gilligan has been in touch saying the piece wasn’t presented as an “exclusive” (see comments). I’m happy to reword my post to reflect that and to clarify what I actually meant, which is that my overall impression from the tone of the story was that it was new, when in fact it wasn’t, and it added nothing at all to what was widely reported almost three years ago.
In fact, Gilligan’s voiceover in relation to the segment on the donation by Ask contains the phrase “We took our findings to Tony Travers,” a professor at LSE. To me, the use of the phrase “our findings” seems to suggest that a story has been uncovered for the first time, rather than recycled.
The programme can be viewed at onthebox.com.
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So they were cleared of wrongdoing, and therefore nothing untoward took place? As if. The entire system is corrupt from top to bottom.
The programme did not say or imply that the Manchester story had been “discovered” by Dispatches or was an exclusive. Please get your facts right before you attack other people’s.
It might not have said it, but it certainly implied it with the phrase “our findings”. As in: “We took our findings to Tony Travers.” I’d suggest this phrase implies an exclusive or investigation of some sort and, arguably, distorts the fact that this is very old news.
Another correction to your facts is needed, I’m afraid. Not that impressive for a professional journalist. This time you are deliberately quoting selectively from the show in order to bolster your argument. The “finding” we took to Tony Travers was not the Manchester case, our discovery – which WAS found by the programme – that there have been nine such recent cases where property developers have donated money to local parties just before those same developers made a planning application. You also forgot to mention that the programme featured two more of these nine cases, which have not been reported elsewhere.
I don’t agree with your claim that “the ‘finding’ we took to Tony Travers was not the Manchester case”. In your final edit, the “findings” taken to Travers do relate specifically to Ask’s donation to the Manchester Labour Party. The programme is edited like this: the facts of the Ask donation are explained, then there is an interview with Simon Ashley about the Ask case, then the sentence “We took our findings…” is heard on the voiceover, before Tony Travers speaks, apparently about this specific case. We then return to a statement from Ask defending its conduct. There’s no other way of interpreting it: the segment on Ask was presented as a new finding. Watch the programme via the link on the post if you don’t believe me – it’s about 26 minutes in. (And you may well have discovered other new stuff – and good luck to you – but that’s not what I was blogging about.)
Just seen this. I wanted to clarify that the story originated in the Manchester Evening News before being picked up by the BBC and others. It’s been regularly reheated in the nationals ever since.
Funnily enough, we put it on p2. Must have been a great news day…
http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/s/129/129202_labour_facing_quiz_over_5000_donation.html
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