Emily Bell (Grenfell reflects the accountability vacuum left by crumbling local press, 26 June) rightly identifies the collapse of local newspapers as a factor that allowed the housing safety crisis to run unchecked. That’s why the Green party wants to introduce what’s been dubbed a “Google tax” – a small tax on online advertising to fund local community-interest journalism. There is some brilliant work done on hyperlocal websites and other media, such as the Dorset Eye, The Public Interest (Sheffield) and Hackney Citizen. But these are maintained by the selfless dedication of individuals and what is needed is financial support to enable far more people to contribute.
But the national media is also at fault. With much of its ownership concentrated with a small handful of rightwing media tycoons, it’s no wonder that the well-documented previous concerns of Grenfell residents didn’t get a hearing. The editorial direction of most of our media has been to demonise residents of social housing, rather than listen to them. We urgently need to introduce the kinds of restrictions on ownership proposed by the Media Reform Coalition, which would open up the mainstream to a greater variety of voices.
There is also a cultural issue within the media. The bulk of what passes as “news” has narrowed to the point of absurdity. Westminster political games, crime, the lives of celebrities are just about it. The realities of people’s lives, the physical fabric of our communities and the decline of our natural world have, in much of the media, been forced to fit into odd corners and little-watched spaces. The BBC, and particularly its political reporting, has to bear some of the blame for this. Politics should be about issues and lives, not personalities and point-scoring. There should be heart-searching in many of our institutions after the Grenfell Tower tragedy. The media is certainly one of them.
Natalie Bennett
Former leader, Green party
• The decline of the local journalist started earlier than the recent budget cuts. At the BBC local radio stations where I worked in the late 80s and early 90s it was common to pull in a district reporter to cover whenever someone was on leave or off sick in the central newsroom. There was an assumption that a district reporter “out there” wasn’t as productive as one in the hub. Gradually their patch was left untended and newsrooms became reactive to stories they could and should have spotted much earlier.
Andrew Vincent
Cheltenham, Gloucestershire
