Why am I starting fights with the Havering Daily?

Over the last few months, I have made a number of public criticisms of The Havering Daily. In the below, I outline why.

An Important Part of The Media Landscape

The Havering Daily (THD) was an important ally and support during my time as a Councillor. It provided me with a way to reach residents, challenge the administration, and the team were, mostly, good to me.

We have a media drought in Havering, with just two outlets having any meaningful reach. The Havering Daily and the Romford Recorder are about the only options available to local residents. This is reflected across the UK and is increasingly the case as people turn to social media for their news.

THD started as an important challenger to the Recorder and competition is always welcomed. One important feature of THD was that it would print opinion pieces from just about anyone. This is both a blessing and a curse.

Growing Responsibility

As THD has grown, it has become the most prominent source of news in Havering. It operates a number of very large Facebook groups and the articles published are read by thousands every day.

This growing reach means that it has a larger and larger responsibility, and a larger battle to keep things under control. The team have, to my knowledge, not expanded at the same level as their reach and it appears that they may be struggling.

Here is where they are, in my view, struggling.

THD is more akin to a tech platform. Whilst they have reporters and report on news, they also facilitate others publishing. I think that this position of influence and authority comes with a heightened level of responsibility.

None of this is easy.

Local journalism is under enormous financial pressure, and most independent outlets operate with tiny teams. That's exactly why difficult decisions have to be made about where limited resources are spent. If you choose to run large public forums, you take on responsibility for moderating them. If you don't have the capacity to do that well, you should consider reducing the scale of what you operate.

Those are difficult choices, but influence brings responsibility. As an organisation grows, readers quite reasonably expect higher standards of moderation, accuracy and accountability.

The Pride Flag Article

On 25 June, THD published an article on Progress Pride and Trans Pride flags being raised above Havering Town Hall. Their original article stated that national flags were removed, which was inaccurate.

THD amended the article, rapidly, but hours later the incorrect statements still appeared on their Instagram pages. The URL (web address) for the article also remained the same (and still do as of 1:30pm).

Whilst I acknowledge that THD changed the article, it will have already been read and the incorrect information circulated. The fact that the URL and Instagram remain is a problem.

THD's Instagram as of 13:44 on 25 June.

Havering has heightened levels of tension around flags, in part thanks to regular misinformation shared by our Member of Parliament, who claims the council refuse to fly the national flags (they do not refuse). Havering, under Reform, recently refused to fly the Progress Pride flag during Pride month, and this led to a prominent local debate on the issue.

Informing residents that a national flag was removed, to be replaced by a Pride flag, is going to cause problems.

It is, in my view, right that THD issue a prominent correction and remove the social media post, as well as changing the URL (which will mean removing and republishing the article).

Issues With Comments

As they operate large social media groups, THD comments can often attract very unpleasant comments. These have ranged from the worrying to the outright racist and homophobic.

These comments do not reflect the view of THD, to my knowledge, but they can often be left unchallenged and available for all to see. Previously, when I have raised this, the response is "We're a small team and we cannot keep on top of all of this"

What Needs To Be Done

As THD has now reached such a prominent position of influence, it needs to implement proper safeguarding. This includes properly resourcing itself so that it can remove those comments.

It also means resisting the temptation to publish first. Stories should be checked thoroughly before pressing 'send'. Across modern journalism, the pressure to be first can come at the expense of accuracy. For a publication with THD's reach, accuracy should win every time.(I often make this error!).

My fight is not so much with THD, they're net positive to the community. But, their response to me has been worrying. When I flagged the comments, their reply was "we're a small team". When I flagged the inaccurate article, their reply was "we fixed it" (they had only done that in part).

The Independent Press Standards Organisation, who the THD refer to in their complaints policy, say the following about issuing corrections:

“The concept is ‘due prominence’ is more complicated to apply to digital journalism than traditional print publication, but one thing has not changed: correcting significantly inaccurate, misleading or distorted information with due prominence is the right thing to do for readers and signifies a publication’s commitment to high editorial standards"

I am not at war with THD. I do think that they need to step up and properly resource, to prevent dangerous misinformation and to properly monitor comments on platforms they operate. Facebook groups are not just the responsibility of Facebook. During my time as a councillor, I was advised that I could potentially be held responsible for comments left under posts on platforms I administered.

When so much of Havering's media is in the hands of so few, extra diligence and scrutiny need to be applied.

I am calling on THD to:

1) Properly resource their Facebook groups with a team that can monitor comments. Other groups have groups of volunteers who do this well.

2) Issue a formal correction notice on the flag article.

3) Scale back on acting as a free-for-all publication platform. Reporting on political issues should include the right of reply, before being published (on a few occasions, THD would not publish my pieces about the council until the council had issued a reply).

Or they need to scale back to ensure they do less, but better.

The news media is hard. THD is operating in an incredibly difficult environment, and that's understandable. They remain an asset to Havering, and we need strong independent local journalism to thrive.

My concern isn't that mistakes happen. Every newsroom makes mistakes. My concern is how those mistakes are handled once they're identified, and whether organisations with significant influence have enough resources to prevent avoidable harm in the first place.

Support local journalism. Support independent journalism. But don't stop challenging it. The more influence an outlet has, the more accountability it should welcome.