Draft letter which members may send to their MP:

Dear...

As a journalist, and member of the Chartered Institute of Journalists (CIoJ), I am writing to urge you to resist current proposals by ITV to cut back on local and regional news bulletins.

Stories that have the power to inform, educate, entertain, and stir local people to action will be lost in an effort to find general topics that appeal to a wider audience.

You will no longer see stories such as:

[Enter details of a local news story in your area]

Reducing their commitment to public service broadcasting would save ITV the expense of keeping local journalists in the field. But it would also have wide-reaching affects over how well briefed the public is about local issues.

As an MP, you know how important it is to disseminate information about local issues. If ITV’s proposals receive the ‘go-ahead’ from Ofcom, many of your constituents will have their access to local news severely cut.

These proposals seek to merge various news regions together. For example, [West Sussex, parts of Gloustershire, Hampshire, and Dorset may be reduced to one regional area].

The result of spreading news coverage over such a wide area would be to dilute local news substantially or cut it out altogether.

Many issues that are currently covered in local news bulletins will have no appeal to viewers of regional programmes because they relate to issues hundreds of miles away.

In the interests of the public, and your constituents, this deliberate downgrading of local news should be vetoed.

As a matter of urgency, I hope that you will write to Ofcom, and to your colleague James Parnell at the Ministry of Culture Media and Sport, to register your view against the ITV proposals.

Yours...

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