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 but do not necessarily reflect those of the authority itself.

I’ve struggled to decide what I want to talk about this week as there’s so much I could write about.

The trouble is that it’s all a bit depressing.

So, I’m going to start with some exciting news. It seems our little communications team is on the national radar. Firstly, because of the fantastic work that my colleague Phil Jewitt has been doing to tackle the branding and identity issues we face, he’s been asked to speak at conference in London.

The great and good of local government communications from across the UK will be there and it’s a fantastic opportunity for Phil to talk about the work we’ve been doing and of course highlight Leeds City Council itself.

Meanwhile, I’ve been asked to do a guest lecture at Leeds Met University. I’m ‘allowed’ to talk about what I like; but I’ve not yet decided what the topic should be. I need to fill 45 minutes and take questions at the end as well. Again, this will be a good opportunity to talk up all the exciting things that are going on here.

Right, so that was the good news – now here’s the more depressing bit.

I’ve finally finished reading the book Flat Earth News. This as a result of spending the weekend at my mum’s house in Hampshire and her refusal to let me watch X Factor on the big TV in her front room (she wanted to watch a period drama).

Flat Earth News is all about the distorted facts and misreporting that goes on in the media because of national agencies (such as governments and the CIA for example) feeding untruths to journalists. It makes the point that sometimes these untruths end up being treated as fact because they are repeated so often.

The worrying thing is that it seems too many reporters these days are accepting one source for their story and are not bothering to check the facts.

For instance,one of our local journalists ran a very emotional piece the other day which was very critical of the council and contained a number of major inaccuracies. However, the first we knew about it was when we saw it on the TV! When I spoke to the editor about it my first question was ‘when exactly were you going to call us about this story so that the facts could be checked – and – give us the opportunity to reply?’

She ‘wasn’t sure’.

OK, so we got our right to reply eventually, but it was a week later and then we only had about 90 seconds to explain what is a very complicated issue.

I can see the poacher has a much easier time of it than the gamekeeper does.