The Northern Echo: yesterday, toady, every day

TVM goes in search of the politics behind

‘The Great Daily of the North’

Scott Hunter

14 December 2020

To the lengthening list of people who won’t talk to us, Tees Valley Monitor may now be able add the name of Karl Holbrook, recently appointed editor of the Northern Echo.  We wrote to him a couple of weeks ago when a remarkable article about Teesside Airport appeared in the paper.  What was remarkable about it was that it contained no news whatsoever (thenorthernecho.co.uk/news/18912335.low-cost-carriers-landing-teesside-following-return-ryanair).

Also remarkable was that it adds to a burgeoning collection of frankly bizarre articles that have appeared over the past few weeks.   On 2 December we were entertained to what appears to be a tour of the airport’s cupboards (thenorthernecho.co.uk/news/18912917.behind-scenes-teesside-airport-details-major-refurbishment-revealed).  Prior to this was an article announcing that four military flights took had taken off from the airport during November (thenorthernecho.co.uk/news/18908651.military-planes-teesside-airport).

No that’s not a misprint.  Four it is. Not quite the Berlin airlift, as you might say.

We’re now looking forward to ‘Sales of  Twixes up 25% at Teesside Airport’.

At the last count the paper had printed twelve articles on the airport since 25 November. 

Far be it from us to accuse the Echo of parochialism, but, to put things in perspective, the return of Ryanair, which received extensive local press coverage, and which Houchen himself described as ‘seismic’, did not make it to the newsfeed on Ryanair’s own website. 

We are not out to make fun of the Echo, however.  Because this is not parochialism.  It is politics.  The military flights article ends with a two-theme Houchen quote (also available on his FB) - we’re proud to support the service men and women + the airport isn’t just holiday flights.

The Echo provided Houchen, on the thinnest of pretexts, a platform to grandstand his patriotism.  The article on the cupboards similarly allowed Houchen to repeat his entirely bogus claim that Peel Holdings, the previous owners of the airport, were deliberately running it into the ground.

By coincidence, one of the team at TVM recently pitched an article in which the Northern Echo was mentioned, albeit as background information.  The article’s working title is ‘The Collapse of the Fourth Estate and the Dangers of English Devolution’.  The Echo featured as follows:

“The Northern Echo, once home to Harold Evans, is still in business.  But times have changed since he championed investigative journalism through its pages.  It now contains no editorial, there are no investigations and no political opinion writers...

The same can be said of the Middlesbrough Gazette, the Hartlepool Mail … the fourth estate proper has all but vanished.”

So far, so unfortunate. 

After decades of neglect from Westminster, this region finally has, in the devolution settlement, an opportunity for regeneration.  Since 2017 and the creation of the Tees Valley Mayor, politics now has a dimension on Teesside that did not exist previously.  If that is to succeed there needs to be discussion and scrutiny.  The local press provides neither of these. 

But the Echo takes things one step further.  It provides brand advertising for Houchen.  Because that is all these articles are; they’re adverts.  If there’s any doubt about that, consider that the one thing noticeable by its absence from any of these reports is any other voice.  When TVM writes to the editor to fact check an article, there is no response. 

Bear in mind that the Echo is a newspaper with no editorial, in which no political leaning is ever explicit.  In that respect, its public face is like that of the BBC, the balanced reporter.  Except that in reality no such balance exists. The TVCA and the ubiquitous Ben Houchen essentially stay under the radar of critical scrutiny.   That does this region no service.  The Echo has, in fact, become nothing more than a cog in Houchen’s PR machine.

TVM has approached Karl Holbrook for comment.