Marc Allinson: The media's vendetta against the on-trade
We have brought people together, allowed our premises to be used for business meetings and private parties, we've created communities and raised vast quantities of money for charities whilst directly and indirectly creating jobs for hundreds of thousands of people in the UK - raising billions of pounds of revenue for the treasury.
Alternatively a more commonly peddled interpretation is that we are hives of drunkenness, violence and crime which will inevitably spill out and destroy the lives of everybody within the vicinity of any public house with the fighting, vomiting and urinating of lads and ladettes who only want to cause trouble. Not to mention that we are destroying the health of anybody who dares to have more than an arbitrary number of drinks pushed on us from the powers that be.
It is becoming more and more obvious that the media has a vendetta against the alcohol trade.
Just in the last week or so I have seen two major examples of supposedly independent reporters actively looking to find problems to back up the position that all pubs are bad.
On a recent edition of the BBC's "The Politics Show", they aired a local report on the problems with binge drinking within York city centre. In their report, they expressed how there was a huge problem with drink related disorder and showed some images of people going in and out of pubs.
I discussed the show with our local Chief Superintendent who was interviewed on the show, and he told me that on a Saturday night the reporters were trailing up and down the city centre streets looking for trouble, they spent a considerable amount of time on what has regularly been described as "the notorious Micklegate Run" and could not find anything worthy of filming, no trouble, no fights, no disorder whatsoever just responsible people having a good time, they ended up explaining how the young people were drinking to excess by showing a young lady stumbling in her high heels as she crossed the road.
Secondly, this week there was an event organised for the students at the local university called "Carnage" whereby a large number of students visit several pubs and bars on an organised route, ending up in a night club. The report began with the line "Police and pub bosses are on alert over plans for a massive student drinking session predicted to bring 'mayhem' to the streets of York this weekend".
This event has been run a number of times over the last few years, each time with similar headlines beforehand, with absolutely no disorder, and then not mentioned again.
This year again, it has been carried out with great professionalism and responsibility, yet once again if you look at the local press which warned people about the event, they don't mention how well it went off.
Maybe its now time for the media to start reporting fact, not opinion. The constant hunt for sensationalism and headlines, regardless how true, are very damaging to hard-working publicans who want to carry on as we have for hundreds of years without constant interference of the press.
