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What is front page news in the South Wales Guardian, was covered in BBC Wales's main evening TV news bulletins, featured in Private Eye, covered in depth on Radio Cymru and S4C's main news programme, but tucked away in the inside pages of the James Journal?




Actually, it's even worse than that. The press coverage of the ongoing scandal in Carmarthenshire County Council in the SWW Media titles (the Carmarthen Journal, Llanelli Star and South Wales Evening Post) is little more than a cut 'n' paste rehash of the council's own statement to the press, and needless to say the council doesn't see anything wrong with what has been going on.

The online version of the Journal devotes a fairly long piece to the recent events. The first part (22 lines) is a fairly pedestrian account of the background and a summary of last Friday's audit committee meeting, but for some strange reason it fails to mention that the committee bounced responsibility for signing off the statement of accounts back to the Executive Board.

Here is the second part (28 lines in all) after stripping out the council's own statement:

PRIOR to the audit meeting Carmarthenshire Council said it had sought independent legal advice on both issues and remained firmly of the view that it had followed the correct course of action. A council spokeswoman told the Journal:

And finally.....

By one of those quirks of online advertising, the South Wales Guardian's main piece on the scandal is accompanied by an advert offering to tell anyone interested how to:

Take home 90% of Your Pay

And really finally....

The council's press office did modify part of its statement to the Journal. Whereas it previously said it had sought "independent advice", it now explains that this was not just any old independent advice, but advice from a QC.

That's the most expensive advice you can buy. Isn't that reassuring?

And another thing.....

Last week the Carmarthen Journal showed its strange sense of priorities when it reported on a fatal road accident in which a motorcyclist was killed in a collision with a vehicle occupied by Jacqui Thompson and her teenage daughter:

Blogger's Anguish at Fatal Road Crash

This week it reports on what happened when someone tried to stop a group of children and youths from vandalising a church yard in Carmarthen:

OAP abused and left frightened by kids as young as 10 in street

The OAP turns out to be the leader of the Plaid Cymru group on Carmarthenshire County Council, poet, author, politician and sportsman Peter Hughes Griffiths.