{"id":1231,"date":"2006-05-04T09:26:00","date_gmt":"2006-05-04T09:26:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jcm.org.uk\/blog\/2006\/05\/04\/associated-newspapers-give-the-tories-a-handy-freebie\/"},"modified":"2006-11-28T14:48:45","modified_gmt":"2006-11-28T14:48:45","slug":"associated-newspapers-give-the-tories-a-handy-freebie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/2006\/05\/associated-newspapers-give-the-tories-a-handy-freebie\/","title":{"rendered":"Associated Newspapers give the Tories a handy freebie"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today, the day of the local elections, the Metro<\/a> newspaper – a freebie given out to commuters every weekday morning in around 15 major cities, including London, Manchester and Birmingham – handed the Tories between \u00c2\u00a311,000 and \u00c2\u00a316,000 worth of free advertising (ratecard<\/a> .pdf) with what was effectively a half-page advertorial.<\/p>\n

Although it’s no major surprise that right-leaning Associated Newspapers, who own the Metro along with the Daily Mail and Evening Standard, should have a bit of a pro-Tory agenda, to suddently turn over the “60 second interview” feature – normally the preserve of D-list celebs desperately plugging their latest product – to a softball Q&A with the leader of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition (also D-list, but still) is, on the day of an election and with no equivalent space given to the leaders of the other parties, surely a tad off?<\/p>\n

In a seemingly pre-arranged series of at first glance semi-tough questions (“Your strategy of saying nothing while waiting for New Labour to implode appears to be working” being the first – the inclusion of “New” before “Labour” pointing out to people that the red party is no longer the same as it once was), Cameron is effectively given half a page to pitch his party exactly as he pleases.<\/p>\n

Generalised questions about the difference between Tory and Labour Councils – a nonsense, as on a local level there is effectively no overriding ethos for any party – are followed by gifts along the lines of “are you getting some panniers for your bike?”, allowing Cameron to diffuse the mini-scandal of his chauffer following him to work from last week.<\/p>\n

But the real clincher? The final question – smacking of the old days of the utterly deferential royal interview of “Is there anything else you’d like to say, Ma’am?” – “What message do you have for Metro readers?”<\/p>\n

A half page’s advertising (wth colour photo and handy blue branding) in the Metro would have cost any other party \u00c2\u00a311,328.80 for London alone, \u00c2\u00a315,589 for all 15 cities. I wonder if this gift is going to be declared to the appropriate authorities<\/a>?<\/p>\n

(The interview may appear here<\/a> at some point.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today, the day of the local elections, the Metro newspaper – a freebie given out to commuters every weekday morning in around 15 major cities, including London, Manchester and Birmingham – handed the Tories between \u00c2\u00a311,000 and \u00c2\u00a316,000 worth of … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,34,32],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1231","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-conservatives","category-elections","category-the-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1231","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1231"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1231\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1231"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1231"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1231"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}