The Conservative minister in charge of George Osborne’s “northern powerhouse” project has urged his constituents not to read one of the north’s biggest regional newspapers, accusing it of “pro-Labour reporting”.
Writing on his Facebook page, James Wharton was responding to an editorial in the Northern Echo by the paper’s editor, Peter Barron, who criticised the minister for refusing to answer his reporters’ calls or respond to any questions.
Wharton said in the run-up to the last election the Echo contacted him “almost weekly” about a negative story they wanted to publish and that the paper had cropped him out of photos.
Barron, editor of the title since January 1999, wrote on Monday that Echo readers needed to know that the minister had blacklisted the only paper with “Northern” in its title. “He refuses to take our calls or provide us with answers to our questions and has told me to inform my reporters not to call him,” he wrote.
The MP for Stockton South said he did not buy the Echo, did not consider its reporting balanced and that the paper was not widely read in his constituency.
“Now this long-lasting disagreement has been brought to the fore I would again ask that any constituent with a concern about anything they read in the Echo please feel free to contact me directly,” he said. “Or even better, don’t read it. There are other ways to get more balanced local news.”
Barron said Wharton had cited “the Echo’s weekly attacks on me” and the paper’s “continual political bias” when asked to explain his refusal to engage with the publication. When the editor asked for evidence of the “weekly attacks”, the minister responded pointing to the paper’s criticism of him for not attending an emergency Commons debate on the steel crisis.
“What [Wharton] didn’t send me were the links to the Northern Echo’s previous editorial, welcoming his appointment as northern powerhouse minister as a positive move, nor did he mention the full page of editorial we’d given him to write in glowing terms about the benefits of the Northern Powerhouse initiative,” Barron wrote.
Barron said it was important that the Echo’s readers knew that “when articles relating to Mr Wharton don’t include a comment from him, it has never been for the want of trying”.
He added: “James Wharton is an ambitious politician – but heaven help him if he ever has to deal with a truly hostile press.”
