ABSTRACT
As the publicity says, Bradford is a surprising place. After seventeen years as a journalist I came to live in the Bradford area while the Honeyford affair was still raging. The national media had descended on the city and the council was at the centre of a storm over alleged racist comments by a head teacher in one of the city’s schools. The local authority was getting a very bad press but Bradford’s unpopularity in newspaper reports was not untypical. Local authorities in general have frequently proved ideal targets, sometimes rightly, for media criticism.
