Disgraceful reporting

“News” website and blogger both mired in controversy

According to South Tyneside Central TV and the Mr. Monkey blog, South Tyneside veteran Labour councillor Bill Brady was arrested and charged with assault and battery yesterday, ST Central were trumpeting at viewers to watch for confirmation today. Nothing, of course, could be further from the truth and both websites have since amended their content to show a statement released by Northumbria Police:

We can confirm that a 74-year-old man attended South Shields police station voluntarily yesterday, Wednesday, July 1, 2009, to assist officers with enquiries in relation to the alleged common assault at the Town Hall, Westoe Road, South Shields, on Thursday, June 25.
Enquiries into the incident are continuing.
There has been no arrests or charges at this stage.

Having set themselves up as a sort of journalistic outlet one might have hoped that ST Central would at least have had the good grace to offer an apology to Mr. Brady, as perhaps a newspaper might have done if it had committed the same error, we all know that mud sticks. I would not, of course expect Mr. Monkey to issue an apology, why change course now?

As we have seen before, and one might have hoped that the anonymous blogger might have realised, you cannot delete the internet, and few of us have any control over Google

I’m sure Cllr. Brady will not be amused. Nor would he be happy with this Google News Alert

As the Twitterjacks who wrote the spoof Miliband Twitter page remarked;

“It does highlight the importance of the verification of sources, which is clearly becoming more difficult in the web 2.0 era.”

Surely not that difficult, I’ve managed it with a couple of emails and a Google search!

In other “news” ST Central tells us that Allen Branley intended to resign from the Alliance group, and then from the council, and then they carry an embarrassing and nervous video interview with him where he describes the ridiculous “David Davies” moment that he had, and how intends to fight the Westoe by election as the anti-sleaze candidate. Once again he makes no references whatsoever to his failure to attend meetings and represent the people of Westoe, nor does he acknowledge any part of the shambolic behaviour of the Independent Alliance group or his wife at council meetings, he seems to blame the appalling behaviour of councillors entirely on others. It is also revealed that he intends to fight David Miliband at the next general – just to throw the Independent Alliance cat amongst the pigeons.

No wonder he sweated and huffed and puffed his way through that interview.

Local students of South Tyneside’s political theatre may notice a certain amount of correlation between the “news” brought to us by ST Central, and the posts displayed at the semi official “fanzine” of the Independents, recently ranging from the Allen Branley affair, the accusations of assault against Geraldine White, the Ahmed Khan/George Elsom accusations and the general chimps tea party atmosphere at last week’s full council, the two sites virtually share words at times. It makes you wonder if there are any ties between certain of our politicians, who openly cannot stand the Shields Gazette, and the “news” website, part of JAG Productions – just asking, that’s all.

Oh and a final point, how did they get this? I thought that photography within the council chamber was prohibited.

Update

JAG Productions reporter firmly embedded amongst the Independent Alliance supporters in the Town Hall this afternoon, was this just coincidental?

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