Neil Williams, a Liberal Democrat councillor in the London Borough of Haringey, has the story of how the Labour-run council is so desperate to avoid mentioning Liberal Democrats in its publications that it edited out a Liberal Democrat councillor from a photograph.
This follows hot on the heels of the news that local MPs have been mentioned eight times in the council’s official magazine in the last three years. All eight have been of the borough’s Labour MP though; the Liberal Democrat MP (Lynne Featherstone) not getting one single mention.
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6 Comments
Disappointing Mark. I follow the link expecting to see some stunning “editing”. New advances in photoshopping. In fact I see two different pictures. One has four people in it. The other has three people in it and, leaving aside partisan considerations, is the better framed image. No photo has been edited in the making of this brochure.
I am reminded though of some of the Lib Dem pictures used in the Ealing and Southall by-election where the full frame showed say 20 activists of all shapes and colours. That could be seen on websites targeted at your activists. The image used on leaflets however was cropped tight round leadership figures and BME faces. I’d estimate from memory that two-thirds of the image was edited away to create a different impression. Probably worse than choosing a group of three – a photo editors’ preference – over a group of four.
As for the question about Lynne Featherstone. Is she working in a non-partisan way with the council or constantly criticising officers and elected members? If that is the case how would any stories of LF working with the council exist?
I was at a Labour function in a Lib Dem area last night with a Minister present. A local Tory activist appeared to lobby the minister on a particular local issue. Welcomed. He got his chat, his photo opp, his promise of action for local people. Meanwhile the Lib Dem MP for that place is so utterly anal about party that they will not cross the tea room to lobby a minister on behalf of their constituents.
Yes Chris, if only everyone were as non-partisan as you.
Hmmm. To be fair, it is quite untrue to say they “edited out a Liberal Democrat councillor from a photograph”. What happened was that they chose to print a different photograph that didn’t include her.
Sorry to be pedantic, but isn’t the process of choosing to include or crop one photo or another part of a process called “editing”?
If they cropped it, fair enough. I don’t see any evidence that they did that. Maybe they did, maybe they didn’t.
But if they simply took a different photo and used that, there’s no way that amounts to “[editing] out a Liberal Democrat councillor from a photograph”
The thread on this one makes me think some of us want other party to do as we would like them to even if we ourselves also do they things we slage them off for doing !
Not very Libral me things — but wholly democratic ??