We support media freedom and we value quality news. In particular, we support public service broadcasting by the BBC.
Our company motto is ‘Honest Advice in Plain English’, which chimes nicely with ‘Boldly and Frankly’, the motto on Castleford’s Coat-of-Arms’ which our company logo, by special permission of the local authority, Wakefield MDC, incorporates. We like to think we live up to both mottos, engaging frankly with the media and we tell it like it is, even when we know that what we’re saying will be unpopular with some people.
Amongst other appearances and interviews, Neil Liversidge has featured on BBC Radio 4’s Money Box and BBC TV’s Panorama, and for an exceptionally long eight-year run on BBC Radio Leeds, Neil was the station’s ‘Money Guru’, answering listeners’ money questions and commenting on financial matters in a regular weekly slot with one of BBC Local Radio’s most distinguished broadcasters, Andrew Edwards. In the print media, Neil wrote a monthly column for over five years in the trade magazine Money Marketing. His letters and articles have also been featured in many other publications.
If you are a journalist and would like a comment or some background help with an article, give us a call. We shall always try to help. If you want to check the technical aspects of a story, we’ll help with that too and we’ll do it in the strictest confidence. We’ve offered this help to genuine accredited journalists for many years and we know for a fact that we’ve saved quite a few from exposing themselves to undefendable libel cases. Some of the stories we’ve helped with have involved extremely prominent public figures.
Sometimes we’ll disagree with a journalist. If we do, we’ll explain why and ask them to consider the other side of the story. In egregious cases though we’ll give them a special mention in our Lewisballs blog here [Link to Lewisballs]. If we do that though, unlike the print and broadcast media, as we make clear in Lewisballs, we shall always guarantee the other party their right of reply.
Whilst we are running a business, we’re not running in a popularity contest. We tell people what they need to hear, not what they want to hear. We give ‘Honest Advice in Plain English’ as it says on our notepaper and signage, like it or lump it!
