News for Cheshire

From Chester Wiki

[edit] Introduction

It can't be difficult to get news from Cheshire!

According to the BBC Online website's map of England, Cheshire does not exist. Local news coverage is split among its micro-sites for Merseyside, Greater Manchester and Staffordshire. A campaign to change this was started in July 2006.

The core details of the BBC news campaign can be found on the petition web page.

In March 2007, the campaign finally received a reply from Hugh Berlyn, head of BBC News Online for England, in which he promised that the issue was being looked at.

On 4 April 2008, Chester-based journalist Louise Bolotin, who runs the News for Cheshire campaign, took part in a televised debate on Newswatch (BBC News24) where she sparred with Tamsin O'Brien, head of regional and local programmes for BBC North West. O'Brien conceded that Cheshire licence payers receive a poor service and announced that a comprehensive proposal to expand news and other content for Cheshire on the BBC website had been submitted to the BBC Trust for approval. Bolotin responded that, as the proposal might not get the green light until early 2009, licence payers would struggle to understand why an interim solution (namely to add a county page to the existing News Online site) could not be implemented. O'Brien said it would be "inappropriate" until the Trust's decision had been made.

So, the campaign continues for 2008 and the pressure will be increased.

Most amusingly - while the BBC has a profile of it's Chester Reporter on it's website - trying the link marked "BBC in Cheshire" on the same page takes you to a page about Stoke! However, we would encourage everyone to send Ms Simms their stories so she can show her associates in the south that things do happen in Chester/Cheshire. In terms of competition, "screenchester" has set-up an internet TV station.