Over two weeks ago the Salford Star was contacted by Swinton resident and terminal cancer patient, Reg Howard, after he was left in pain and coughing blood for eight hours following a call to the emergency doctor.
When the doctor finally arrived to see Reg, he apologised and said he was the only doctor on call covering 15 surgeries, which the Star worked out at one emergency doctor for 80,000 people.
Shocked, the Salford Star called and emailed Salford Royal NHS Foundation Trust, which has a £1.667million contract with Salford Clinical Commissioning Group to provide the Out of Hours service.
We asked the Trust for an explanation...to confirm that there was only one doctor on call that day; to confirm the numbers of residents the doctor was covering, and to let us know how many doctors in total covered emergency call-outs in Salford on that day.
After giving the Trust ample time to respond, the Salford Star ran the article – and we still haven't had a response (see here).
It is now becoming typical in Salford that legitimate press requests from the Salford Star are routinely binned, following Salford City Council's lead. Neither Salford Council nor the City Mayors – first Ian Stewart and now Paul Dennett – have responded to requests for quotes, comments or information for over four years.
Urban Vision, which has so much to answer for in Salford, just refers any press queries to Salford Council, which are also binned. Similarly, every Salford school that has been approached for comments also either ignores requests or passes them onto the Council to trash.
Meanwhile Salix Homes, City West Housing and Pendleton Together, the three companies that are responsible for tens of thousands of Salford residents' homes, also refuse to answer questions from the Salford Star based on their own tenants' complaints.
So where is the accountability? These organisations have huge marketing and PR budgets to push their stories (Pendleton Together even has its own TV station) but refuse to engage with anything that might be critical.
Will Greater Manchester devolution help democracy? Not in the Salford Star experience. The Greater Manchester Police Commissioner/interim Mayor, Tony Lloyd, refused to answer any press enquiries during the Barton Moss protests; while Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA), the organisation that is responsible for devolution, doesn't respond to Star requests about anything.
Even the Parliamentary Select Committee found, on devolution, that "There has been a consistent very significant lack of public consultation, engagement and communication at all stages of the deal-making process" (see here).
Private companies like Peel Holdings (MediaCityUK etc), Countryside Properties and Urban Splash, that have no qualms about pocketing £millions of taxpayers' money, don't feel it necessary to be in any way accountable by answering basic press questions. It's almost like there is an absolute dearth of democracy and transparency in the city.
While the Salford Star, like any other citizen, can submit Freedom of Information (FOI) requests, these are only relevant to public bodies covered by the FOI Act – and even then the Star usually gets the run around.
It took two years to uncover the rent paid by Salford University to Peel Holdings for its campus at MediaCityUK, via the Information Commissioner. And the Commissioner has again been involved in forcing Salford Council to reveal details of its secret Development Trust Account with the English Cities fund (see yesterday's article – click here).
Last year, the Information Commissioner put Salford Council on a special monitoring list, after residents and the press were left waiting ridiculously long times for FOI responses (see here).
So what is going on? The Salford Star believes that public, private and semi-private organisations in the city want a compliant media – and that by ignoring requests from critical press they hope to somehow reduce its credibility, rather than their own credibility.
In an amazingly honest response to an interview question by Hannah Scarbrough of Cardiff University's Centre for Community Journalism, about local community news outlets, one council press officer replied...
"From my experience, any press releases we issue, they tend to just kind of cut and paste what we do, so that kind of works for us because stuff doesn't get changed."
It's an interesting insight into how press offices work. They want journalists to merely cut and paste their propaganda. And there's plenty in Salford doing that. But actually question what is going on in the city and what is happening to its community, and it's another story...even though it's usually the community that is paying for everything.
* See also previous Salford Star article - Freedom of Press Threatened By Bully Local Councils - click here
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
(3).jpeg)
.png)
(1).JPG)
