If we are to talk of the importance to democracy of the existence of a variety of news sources, we must ensure our concerns extend beyond the fears that the HTV news operation will collapse, leaving a broadcasting monopoly to the BBC.
We must also look at the newspaper world.
That may prove difficult. Because politicians are scared of the Trinity Mirror group. And with good cause.
Whatever you may think of the Western Mail, it possesses in fact a near-monopoly of newspaper-journalism in Wales. And the paper has not been afraid to use that power. Remember how they axed then-culture minister Alun Pugh as a columnist after he dared to criticise the paper’s standards.
Currently, the Mail has been throwing its weight around in a non-stop effort to have Nick Bourne sacked as party leader. At the behest of whom ? Surely, right-wing anti-Assembly Tories.
And now we have the news that Trinity Mirror are to combine their Welsh (Cardiff) and North-West (Liverpool) divisions. In a press release (which was NEVER released to the company’s web-site), TM say this has been done “in response to current trading conditions, and it also makes good strategic sense to group both our Wales businesses into a simplified structure as part of one region”.
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