Last year I was appointed editor of a magazine called First Car. It’s an established title which sells 150,000 copies of each issue, to local authorities which send it out to young drivers. One of the features in the current issue is on drug driving; the dangers of driving while on drugs, plus the potential penalties for doing so.
One police force’s in-house magazine had a feature on drug driving recently, so I got in touch to ask if we could use any of the images; a fair enough request you’d think, and especially as we were happy to pay for them. The next day I received a phone call from the force’s press office to say in no uncertain terms that we couldn’t have any images, there would be no interviews with anybody and there was no discussion to be had about it. Hmm…
As well as the drugs feature there’s one on a traffic cop and his car (kit carried, resources available, training needed, etc), plus one on the various ways you can incur a fine or get penalties while driving. Cop woman made it clear there would be no help forthcoming for either of these features at all – and again, there was no discussion to be had on the subject.
To try to get off the ground we dealt with other police press offices, including those for the Home Office, ACPO, while we also spoke to the folks representing the NHS and Talk to Frank (for the drug driving piece). Not one was able to offer an interview, images, info or indeed any help in any way.
So, here we are trying to put together a magazine that goes out to 150,000 young drivers, with a focus specifically on road safety. The buyers are road safety officers from local authorities, so we’re clearly on side – and God knows they currently have a mountain to climb as 17-year olds constantly propel themselves into the scenery at high speed. Despite this, I didn’t get a single piece of help of any kind from a single press office I dealt with; nobody I spoke to was interested. Do you find that ever so slightly worrying? I know I do.
Yes I find it very worrying….
Proof yet again that “Big Brother” Police policies are becoming increasingly more mindlessly oppressive rather than being informed and progressive.
AlfaMartini | 14 Apr 08 - 17:38How did this all work out Richard - the pieces appear in the latest First Car, so did the police finally see sense?!
Tom Callow | 11 Sep 08 - 15:26Tom, we bypassed all the press offices to get the help we needed for the last issue. It was only by using contacts ‘on the street’ that we got the articles done.
However, a little bit of good news; the latest issue is out this week and the folks in the West Mercia Police press office rallied round to help us with a feature on crash investigation, while Kent Police helped us with a feature on the effects on drink driving.
Perhaps they read my post here and realised they’d missed a trick; I’d like to think so…
Richard
Richard Dredge | 12 Sep 08 - 23:00