Are police PRs the scourge of public service journalism? Following my Sally Murrer article in the London Evening Standard, several journalists have written to me about the problems they now face in trying to extract information from various police forces.
Jon Slattery, in his blog, has also pointed out that during his years at Press Gazette, he noted journalists' frustration at suffering a subtle form of official censorship. He writes:
"We had lots of complaints that PROs were withholding information that used to be routinely given to journalists by police officers. There were many examples where the data protection and human rights acts were wrongly given as reasons not to give out information.
"When I was an evening paper reporter the police used to let you copy what you wanted out of the incident book at the police station."
And that, of course, is the point. It wasn't always like this. But we need more concrete evidence of this happening if we are to have any hope of changing the climate.
