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During 23 years with the BBC, and a 42 year journalistic career (when he was trained to use clear and simple language, avoiding jargon), for our Editor, Welshman Phil Parry, neutrality has always been paramount (with laws governing it before elections), but now major questions are being asked of a nationalist website which receives a substantial Welsh Government (WG) grant, when it said an actor had released a “stirring Plaid Cymru campaign video”.
It feels like ‘teaching Grandmother to suck eggs’, but sadly it apparently needs re-stating: JOURNALISTS SHOULD BE NEUTRAL!
This is basic stuff, but unless you are seen as impartial, supporters of other parties won’t come to you with stories, thinking: “It’s no good going to them, because they back the other lot!”.
As I have been a journalist since August 1983 I know this fundamental tenet better than most, and I take pride in the fact that on The Eye I have upset ALL the main parties!
It is especially important to be neutral before an election – and as I have presented any number of election night programmes I have always tried to follow this iron rule. When I was in broadcasting (which is where I was for 23 years), there would be laws enforcing this, so if you covered a controversial issue in an area, you would have to get the views of ALL parties. This is known as ‘purdah’. By convention on the actual day of the election nothing that could be construed as party political should be reported, which is why you always see anodyne items about the most isolated polling booth etc.
I am therefore left dumbfounded by the behaviour of Nation.Cymru (NC) with just a few weeks to go before an important election to the Welsh Parliament/Senedd Cymru (WP/SC).
One ‘feature’ on this supposed ‘news’ website declared yesterday: ‘Acclaimed Welsh actor, Mark Lewis Jones has lent his support to a stirring campaign video for Plaid Cymru, calling for the Welsh electorate to “step forward and show the world what Wales is and what we can do”..
I have recently had a conversation with a leading figure in NC who stressed that any information of a negative kind, for example, about the Welsh Government (WG), or Plaid Cymru (Plaid) leader Rhun ap Iorwerth WOULD be reported.
The problem with this is that even if it were true (and it is questionable to say the least!), you would open yourself to accusations that some details had been held back.
Readers might think: “I bet there is more to this that we are not being told about because they get all this money from the Welsh Government, and support Plaid!”.
In 2023 NC was confirmed as one of the recipients of The Books Council of Wales (BCW) English-language Cultural Periodicals Grant (CPG) for 2024–28. The grant is funded by the WG through Creative Wales.
In other words MY money is funding a Plaid mouthpiece!
NC has, though, long hit the headline for the wrong reasons – for example one story on it prompted appalling and potentially illegal abuse online, including that the person in question should be killed.
The item at the heart of it all exposed how an independent councillor who is chairman of Bangor City football club, but had apparently told it that he wants to stand as a Reform UK candidate for Parliament, was jailed 15 years ago for three and a half years for his involvement in a gang that grew cannabis plants worth £14 million.
Nick Pritchard had been co-opted onto Bangor City Council (BCC). But in 2010 he was one of several men prosecuted at Caernarfon Crown Court (CCC) for their involvement in a drugs scandal.
However Mr Pritchard hit back vowing to get the website shut down, and describing NC journalists in a Facebook (FB) post as “rats”.
This also became a story for them.
But the original item provoked comments online such as: “Fuck him.Just take him out. Who the fuck does he think he is.Come on Wales .Kill the piece of shit.Let’s people have some guts.What the fuck is going on probably and (sic) English arsesole (sic).”.
Ironically ‘vile’ abuse also featured in one of NC’s articles, and it declared: “After we published our first story about Pritchard, a number of readers contacted us to thank us for exposing someone they regard as a vile, abusive individual.”.
This followed other extraordinary headlines.
An extremely disturbing description about it came on Wikipedia, which was that: “There is a wider feeling on social media sites where Nation articles are referenced that the website provides very narrow and subjective journalism. Many stories lack factual evidence and are regularly based on stretched concepts that seek to excite a perception of injustice to be directed at the wider UK Government and people of England”.
NC might also look to FB, where it has been accused of: “…becoming a battering ram for extreme misguided information (and included) articles (which are designed) to stir up hatred in all….. instead of making us proud to be welsh”.
Another FB comment was: “It only takes a brief scan of this site to discover that it’s not what it claims to be. It’s Not a Welsh News outlet. This site is a biased Propaganda Outlet for Left Wing Independence activists and supporters. It’s not impartial or balanced in any way and it targets only a limited section of the Welsh public. An intolerant ‘Echo Chamber’ for Like minded people would be a far more accurate description”.
A further one was: “Nation.Cymru claims to be some sort of independent & impartial news service for the people of Wales. It is clearly nothing of the sort. Judging by the articles it has published to date it is nothing more that (sic) another “echo chamber” for those on the left of Welsh politics who dream of an independent Wales. It clearly ticks all the boxes for Chairman Drakeford (the First Minister of Wales) Is that why NC has received public money from the Sennedd (sic) ????”.
These announcements follow earlier criticism of NC on FB, with one detractor saying the site was “biased”.
It does, though, appear to attract support in extremist circles, with comments about burning down holiday homes, and it has been revealed that key workers’ property was targeted.
One critical observation on NC’s FB platform was: “It’s a biased online site for some of the people of Wales”.
A further outraged remark was: “If people are going to criticise one group they need to consider the actions of others, otherwise its called hypocrisy… we need to ensure all sides play by the rules”.
NC has boosted the Welsh independence movement by saying, for example, “Support for Welsh independence has risen again”, because it was at 11 per cent whereas the previous year it was seven per cent.
Meanwhile NC’s lack of journalistic neutrality has been shown by the fact that it failed to cover the astonishing news Plaid did not declare large amounts of money, but it DID publish a piece about the UK Tory party showing it in an extremely bad light, and another prominent item saying “Conservative AM has accepted more free international rugby tickets than any other UK politician”.
One NC ‘news’ piece said that: “The county of Gwynedd in the north-west has seen the largest collapse in consumer spending as a result of Covid-19 in both Wales and England, according to business data”, while another attacked the whole idea of second homes, which is a key policy of Plaid.
An aggrieved writer, though, was alarmed and proclaimed: “I am genuinely concerned by the amount of vitriol that comes out in the comments on the Nation.Cymru posts, and it makes me feel that we are uncomfortably close to the political posturing of 1930s Berlin. We have had property damage (mostly to key workers cars) and threats and insults made to people (again, often keyworkers going about their legitimate business) because “they’re not from round here.””
The article on NC criticising second homes, also appeared to have Covid-19 in its sights, and began: “If it’s ‘coronavirus holiday’ season in rural Wales, the forecast is frosty for second home owners”, adding: “From spreading the virus and skipping lockdown to unfairly claiming business relief, second home owners have had bad pandemic press”.
A lengthy ‘report’ about the Conservative Party on the website said: “More than half of donations received by new Conservative MPs in Wales came from secretive fundraising clubs based in the south-east of England”. However the story that NC omitted to cover, but received huge media attention in other outlets, was that Plaid had been fined tens of thousands of pounds after not declaring money from public coffers.
This was the BBC report which NC did not promote: “Plaid Cymru has been fined £29,000 for failing to report cash it received from taxpayers’ funds worth nearly £500,000. The Electoral Commission said over a two-year period Plaid had omitted 36 separate sums from quarterly reports. Plaid had failed to declare cash from the House of Commons authorities, and some cash from the Electoral Commission”.
A former Editor of NC (Ifan Morgan Jones) put on FB a picture of a postal ballot paper, with his pen pointing at the Plaid candidate, and has posted a photograph of himself and his partner above the slogan “I’m voting Plaid Cymru”.
He tweeted asking for money to UndebPlaidCymru which declares it is “The official trade union section of Plaid Cymru”.
Dr Jones had also tweeted the ‘Donate’ section of NC which states: “We are now close to realise (sic) our dream of creating a lasting Welsh national media, by the people of Wales and for the people of Wales”. In July 2016 he helped promote a rally for Welsh independence in Caernarfon and said that Wales: “faced being part of a state which (is) being politically neglected”.
Perhaps political neutrality should also not be neglected – especially with an election in Wales coming up…
The memories of Phil’s astonishing decades-long award-winning career in journalism (during which political neutrality was paramount), as he was gripped by the rare neurological condition Hereditary Spastic Paraplegia (HSP), have been released in a major book ‘A GOOD STORY’. Order the book now!
Tomorrow – how for him choosing exact and easily-understood words has, along with impartiality, also been crucial, with the spotlight being thrown on this by one book which is ungrammatical, and another which uses a term known mainly in academic or student circles, so is completely impenetrable to most readers…
