The Guardian and the story that never was
Tuesday, November 20, 2012 at 11:06 No-one would accuse the Guardian of being a friend of Forest.
A few days after the public consultation on standardised packaging closed on August 10 we were contacted by a journalist from that newspaper.
His email read:
I just saw your press release announcing you had collected 235,000 signatures for your Hands Off Our Packs campaign. Where can I find a full list of all the signatories? I looked around your website but couldn't find it. Or perhaps you could email me the document of names that you have presumably now delivered to the Department of Health?
The paper also had some questions about our signature-gathering process.
- What techniques did you use to gather signatures - e-petitioning, door-to-door, street collecting etc etc??
- Which company/agency, if any, did you use to help gather signatures?
- What systems/safeguards did you put in place to ensure all 235,000 signatures were who they said they were/were not duplicates etc?
The email concluded:
I have also put the same questions to the rival campaign run by Cancer Research UK, ASH, etc.
I replied as follows:
Happy to respond to your questions if, as you say, you have also asked the same questions of (and received answers from) the Plain Packs Protect campaign which is supported by ASH, Cancer Research, Smokefree South West etc.
I would also like to request that if you run a story you will publish most if not all of the following comment so that our campaign and the techniques we have used are put in their correct context:
"Our campaign tactics have been inspired by the techniques employed for several years by the tobacco control industry.
"For the first time the public has been given an equal opportunity by both sides of the debate to register their opinion and the response is clear.
"When given a chance to express their views, a huge number of people, almost half a million in total, do not support plain packaging of tobacco products.
"This is far in excess of the number of people who support standard packs. However hard they will try, the anti-tobacco lobby cannot spin their way out of that."
The following day, without waiting for confirmation that the Guardian had received replies from Cancer Research et al, I sent the paper the following email:
In response to your questions:
1. We can confirm that the names and contact details of signatories have been delivered to the Department of Health. Data protection prevents us from providing third parties with personal data. Even if we could, it is not our policy to publish names of signatories to consultations, nor pass third party details to journalists or any external party or organisation without the consent of the individuals concerned.
2. We used a range of techniques to canvass opinion and record opposition to plain packaging. This included e-petitioning and street collecting. Support was also canvassed by a variety of groups including retailers, packaging companies and private individuals, and through our own activities.
3. We used Tribe Marketing Limited, a reputable and independent agency, was engaged to help canvass opinion and record opposition to plain packaging.
I then listed a number of steps that had been taken to verify the authenticity of signatures on the Hands Off Our Packs petition before concluding:
Having taken the measures outlined above we are confident that the risk of duplication (or falsification) is very small indeed.
If there is any hard evidence of wrongdoing we would be extremely grateful if you could pass it on to us immediately. We would take a very dim view of it and would obviously act accordingly.
Finally I repeated my request that the paper publish "most or all" of the quote I had given them in my previous email (see above).
The outcome of this correspondence was as follows:
1. The Guardian did not follow up its enquiry. To the best of our knowledge it has not published anything about the Hands Off Our Packs campaign or our signature-gathering process.
2. We never did find out how Cancer Research UK, ASH, etc responded to a similar enquiry, if indeed that enquiry was ever made.
3. At the time of writing the Guardian has neither produced nor passed on to us any evidence of wrongdoing, as requested in my email.
Draw your own conclusions.
Reader Comments (11)
The journo is obviously a good contact of ASH's, Debs, or Williams himself and wasn't writing or asking about this for the Guardian with a view to a story - he or she was used by the other side simply to find out what they could about our campaign so that they could then throw mud at it. Obviously wasn't quit enough mud no matter how hard they tried.
Those are my conclusions.
I would conclude that a journalist sees something interesting that needs looking into. They made no allegation of cheating and told you they were applying a balanced approach by talking to the other side. Just a newshound sniffing around something that potentially needs looking into.
You, on the other hand, seem to have replied in a strangely defensive mode - but maybe that's because you don't trust the The Guardian? They do have a good track record of uncovering things lately don't they?
Surely the journalist in you sees there is something interesting here? Your campaign has been very successful - particularly when contrasted with the last petition you ran where less than 6,000 supported you in a year. It is a legitimate question to ask why things went so much better this time - 'did you do anything different?' is the core of their question. Are you managing to reach many more people somehow? Or is it just that 230,000 people are upset by the idea of plain packaging but disagreed with you on the AW-T campaign? Because that would be a story in itself - nearly quarter of a million people motivated enough to sign a packaging campaign don't want the smoking ban in pubs rescinded.
Public sector newspaper is biased towards public sector fake charities.
Shock horror.
Guardian - have you asked anyone else?
You just wonder who if anyone approached the Guardian and persuaded them to ask Forest these detailed questions. These are the sort of questions that have not come from any Guardian journalist I suspect but from someone in Tobacco Control.
I further doubt if ASH et al were asked about their methods of signature collection since you have not received any follow up email.
On that basis Simon, I would therefore be very reluctant to give any information in future to the Guardian unless and until they do provide that information.
This paper is not friendly towards Forest and never has been...and I'm sure they're not so assiduous when dealing with TC as they are with you.
Peter Kellner has written in glowing terms about the smoking ban in the Guardian before - therefore you decide about their impartiality – which I’m sure you already have.
I would conclude that the journalist was *told* that there was something interesting to look at but when they did they found it was a crock full of rubbish and lies from the TCI as usual.
As much as they wanted to make it stand up for their buddies they just couldn't because there was nothing to find. Move along there folks. Nothing to see here and the Guardian wasn't going to expose it's own side for wasting NHS cash on a scam - nor for the misrepresentations and down right fraudulent actions of its campaign which have all been logged every step of the way.
We all know there is nothing impartial about the Guardian which does have its own social agenda according to The Guardian but those in the TCI and their stooges who have lied to MPs and the public to push forth their own ideology will be held to account.
This of course never occurred to me.
“Or perhaps you could email me the document of names that you have presumably now delivered to the Department of Health?”
You want the document – yeah, sure…just put in a FOI to the DOH like everyone else!
I am with Pat Nurse on this one. It looks like the Guardian is so far up ASH's rear end they can't see day light.
The question "What systems/safeguards did you put in place to ensure all 235,000 signatures were who they said they were/were not duplicates etc?" is very telling. Why would they be asking such a question?
I mean, if they were doing as "Kevin" suggests surely it would be focusing on "what have you done differently this time" , "how much bigger was your budget this time compared to last time", "how did you secure so much support" , "what proportion of your effort was on line vs off line" etc....
The very specific questions asked points to the fact that the journalist knew about the Tobacco Control generated complaints about your signatures and was hoping to run a splash to discredit you. Full marks on your reply.
Ps that the guardian "journalist" actually asked you "Where can I find a full list of all the signatories?" shows just how inept Guardian so-called "journalists" are. Data protection Doh!
PS Assume you are sure it was a bona fide Guardian journalist and not a member of the ASH dirty tricks dept.
James T - My first thought, I have to admit. Have you taken a glance at the Grauniad lately, Simon, to see if there are any other stories written by this journalist? If he was genuine then you'd be able to find him writing about something somewhere in the paper at least fairly recently. And if not, then I'd be a bit suspicious that he wasn't one of "theirs" at all.
Mind you, if he's just a lone-acting zealot (or perhaps a would-be journo) hoping to uncover a little "dirt," then he clearly isn't a very clever one. If he'd done a modicum of research, he'd know that any mention of the "Big G" would set the alarm bells ringing in any pro-choice supporters' head. A much more cunning ploy would have been to have said he was ringing from the Telegraph ...
"nearly quarter of a million people motivated enough to sign a packaging campaign don't want the smoking ban in pubs rescinded."
Erm, the question of smoking bans wasn't asked. It wasn't up for 'consultation'. Good idea, though, the same energy put into a similar campaign would prove interesting. I believe there would be even more responses. However, if you remember the 'Great Repeal Bill' when it was in the top three and was spat out by Nick Clegg as unmoveable along with capital punishment, perhaps you can understand the cynicism.
This whole question and the so called 'research' given by ASH to the APPG would make a good story but for some reason the Guardian doesn't fancy it. I wonder why?
I can assure everyone that it was a bona fide Guardian journalist who contacted us.
@Kevin. You're making a strange comparison - the smoking ban didn't go to public consultation and the Forest campaign was after the event. But who knows what the outcome would have been? My guess is that , at the very least, there would have been more exemption clauses. Furthermore, many more people would have become aware of the cynical reliance on junk science (as employed and exposed during then ongoing plain packaging campaign). A case of 'once bitten, twice shy'. The government and its TC cronies have seriously shot themselves in the foot over the consultation. That's because the public actually responded (which was never the intended/desired scenario).