This is a copy of my weekly blog which I write for work and is published on the council's intranet.  The views I express in this log are my own, professional, views as the Head of Communications for Leeds City Council but do not necessarily reflect those of the authority itself.

Ding ding! Round Two.

No, not a boxing match with some of my least-loved journalists, but a case of getting ready for another possible bout with the media over yet another serious reputation matter.

You’ll remember that a few weeks ago, I talked about how the communications team sometime spend many hours doing work which never ever sees the light of day.  This is because part of our job is to prepare for times when we might have to react to an issue, but all the time hoping our preparation goes to waste.  Anyway, we’re having to do it again and this afternoon (Tuesday) I’m going to be briefing senior managers and elected members about what we’ve been doing to ready ourselves for some potentially bad news.

Just a month ago we were doing exactly the same thing – so it’s quite a surprise to me that we’ve had to crank ourselves up to DEFCON 1 again in such a short space of time. It seems it never rains, it just pours sometimes.

You’ll excuse me for not going into further detail about the issue in question. It would be most inappropriate for me to discuss it in my Log.  No, it’s not about me keeping secrets, it’s about me having to do my best to protect the reputation of this great organisation we work for.

Right – BREAKING NEWS – we’ve had an apology. Are you sitting down? Good.  This may come as a shock.  The apology is from .... a journalist!  I know. Incredible.  Are you off the floor yet?

This journalist has said sorry after they turned a jokey comment from a press officer (said during an off-the-record chat) into a formal quote, which they attributed to a council spokesman. This is a serious no-no in news terms.  We rely on the relationship we have with reporters and ‘off-the-record’ chats and background briefings are common way of explaining complicated issues. However, to quote something said in one of those briefings just isn’t the done thing.

You won’t be surprised that we challenged this and were pleased to get an acknowledgement of the fact the line had been crossed and an apology from the journalist concerned and their news editor.

Next – your help please.

I was asked last week to respond to a suggestion from one of our colleagues.  She had put forward the idea that we put some kind of date reference on all of our publications.  This so that someone reading, say for instance a leaflet, would know whether it is ‘in date’ or not. I think there are two issues.  Including a ‘printed on’ date is fine, but how would the reader know if a new version had been printed in the meantime?  Then there’s the ‘valid until’ date idea.  For example our 2009 A to Z guide to services isn’t likely to suddenly become out of date on the 31st December but someone picking it up in January 2010 may assume it is.  So, do we do another print run and just change the date?  I honestly don’t know what the best solution is.  That’s where you come in.

I promised our colleague I’d raise this issue – and this is me raising it.  Your feedback or alternative ideas would be welcome please.  Ta.

Finally, I noticed an interesting report the other day which caught my eye.  A study by the Standards Board for England found that local councillors are more likely to be truthful than MPs.  The poll found less than one per cent of people felt local MPs ‘always’ tell the truth, and 29 per cent thought they ‘never or rarely’ tell the truth.  Two years ago when the poll was last carried out, just 20 per cent of people questioned ticked the ‘never or rarely’ box.

However the study found that faith in local councillors was slightly higher than MPs, with more people feeling they ‘always’ tell the truth, with fewer thinking they ‘never or rarely’ did.

This is most encouraging, but I’m not convinced that journalists would agree.  If they did, I suspect the number of calls we’d get in the press office would drop by half overnight!

There’s no extended communications podcast this week – it should be back next Tuesday along with this Log.  Until then, have a good week.