PIP

PIP the pioneer

The Portsea Island Post is an online medium serving the community living on Portsea Island and the surrounding areas. It was lauched by APE-Agence Presse Européenne, a British media group, as part of a new national initiative to improve the standards of objective and independent analysis of local issues and to improved the relevance of national news coverage to local communities through higher quality and more analytical news coverage on the basis of independent editorial control.

National review

This initiative arose from a national media review undertaken during 2006 by APE to analyse the coverage of national events in local news media in Britain. In general national coverage was found to be extremely weak in terms of critical analysis reflecting the implications for local communities. Quite often local media simply issue verbatim or edited press releases supplied by the main political parties. Indeed, many British media have ended up being mouthpieces for specific political parties. Given that the total membership of British political parties is less than 1% of the electorate the almost exclusive media promotion of the views of such minority factions has introduced a severe distortion into news coverage making any analysis of little interest to local communities and the population in general. The current state of affairs is a dumbed down media content. An additional burden on local populations, in terms of their gaining access to more enlightened perspectives and objective information, are the magazines and news sheets published by local councils. The lowest level of information content was to be found in political party "local" news sheets. All such "media" whilst aligning with political party interests, do not tend to align with the preferences or interests of the majority of constituencies. There is a significant gap in such media services in relating community-relevant news to "national discussions" or even international issues. This is the result of there being very little editorial independence where it counts.

Improving local media

The APE Board therefore decided to initiate a strategy of introducing independent local media across Britain in an attempt to improve the quality and independence of analysis of largely political, economic and social issues in terms which are more relevant to local communities. Naturally, to achieve this aim all such media need to remain independent of political parties, religious organizations or commercial groups whilst providing impartial reporting on such organizations when they are referred to.

A pioneer

Portsea Island Post is the first local medium to be launched as part of this APE initiative. The community living on Portsea Island make up part of the constituency of the City of Portsmouth and for some time there has been increasing dismay amongst Island residents at what appears to be a form of social engineering managed by the local council. The examples given include the increasing levels of propaganda contained in the magazine published by the City as well as the unashamed base demagoguey contained in the news sheets circulated by the main three political parties. In all cases the local population appear to be only capable of understanding cliches and being repeatedly told how local councillors and administrative officials are "helping them". Unfortunately, these levels of condescension, so apparent in such media, are more apparent in decision-making such as planning committees who remain unresponsive to resident preference while driving through poltiical minority factional agendas leading to socially-divisive planning decisions. There is an enthusiastic abuse of constituent involvement through the use of the cabinet system of governance and a generally dismissive exclusion of the residents from decision which affect them.

PIP will review such matters with a view to holding decision-makers to account and analyse local issues in terms of their community significance as well as any national legal or legislative implications of local needs. Leading national issues involving politics, social concerns, the economy and constitution as well as other issues as they arise will be covered.

The name, PIP

The name PIP was chosen since this was the name of a character in the novel, "Great Expectations" written by Charles Dickens and who was born on Portsea Island in 1812.