By Nathan Briant

Last Thursday, I, along with tens of other political reporters and newspaper editors of regional titles from around the country, was invited to 10 Downing Street.

There was a reception, attended by Theresa May and cabinet ministers Karen Bradley and Alun Cairns, and Mrs May gave a speech in which she said her Government would support the media.

She said the ‘free, plural and vibrant media is the backbone of this country’s democracy’, that her Government holds that view ‘very strongly’.

Mrs May told us: “I think it is true to say, regional and local media is fearless. It is independent and we are committed to safeguarding its future.

“I know from the discussions I have with my own local paper the significant pressures that are on regional and local press at the moment. Nowhere is this more true than in print journalism where the rapid changes in consumer behaviour and technology have led to falling circulations and advertising revenues.”

Indeed. The Oxford Mail is certainly not immune from those pressures and you, the readers, are the people who lose out most.

Mrs May is an Oxfordshire woman: she was brought up here, educated in West Oxfordshire and Wheatley and then Oxford University. I am sure she wants the Oxford Mail and its sister papers to flourish.

But there are ways in which her Government or people working closely with her attempt to stifle the ways in which we can scrutinise properly.

A few weeks ago, her home secretary Sajid Javid went to the Tap Social Movement in Botley with James Fredrickson, the Tory PPC for Oxford West and Abingdon, to have a look around.

So far, so good. But the Oxford Mail was not told. Speaking to people from other local media, I understand they weren’t told either. Instead, the Conservatives put out a press release documenting the visit a few days later.

As much as I was disappointed not to meet Sajid Javid for the first time, I was angered that the home secretary and the Conservatives seemed to deliberately dodge any scrutiny while he was in Oxford.

This is not an isolated incident.

During the last general election, Theresa May visited Newport in South Wales. The local paper, the South Wales Argus, (which I worked at for nearly three years until May 2016) was not told. (The Government told the paper it was an unfortunate mix up.)

The Government cannot have it both ways: it cannot say it values the local press and then actively ignore it when they know their presence is news in local communities.

It must be said, over the last year and a bit that I have worked at the Oxford Mail, the Government and civil servants have been extremely accommodating at times. Of course they have been: they want their message conveyed to you.

And Oxfordshire is a key part of its growth strategy. It clearly sees the so-called arc between Oxford and Cambridge as an untapped area for extraordinary growth, potentially pulling some influence away from London.

Transport minister Chris Grayling was in Bicester a couple of weeks ago; Kit Malthouse was in the town a couple of weeks before that. Former housing ministers Dominic Raab and Alok Sharma have all had chats with the Oxford Mail.

There are others who have given their time to us too.

It is not a Government which always actively dodges scrutiny when ministers drop into Oxfordshire. But as far as I can see, bad habits are creeping in now and again and they need to be nipped in the bud.

Given (some very notable) Labour MPs’ efforts to actively discredit the press as some sort of capitalist conspiracy led by billionaires, quite how that party would behave if it was elected to Government is unclear.

But Jeremy Corbyn and some acolytes’ suspicions of the ‘mainstream media’ should be confined to the national press – or, more sensibly, done away with entirely. At the Oxford Mail, there is no set agenda, nor, I am sure, at any other local papers. Fleet Street is not the same as local papers.

(At the risk of confusion, Oxford’s MPs have never behaved like this and have always been easy to communicate with.)

It will become easier for papers – as they become more financially challenged over coming years – to simply chuck in press releases from the Government, the Conservatives or Labour, without giving them a second thought.

As far as I’m concerned, that is not the type of journalism that I would want to do. I did not train as a journalist to throw press releases onto pages.

Such practice would be counterproductive for those people sending them in and journalists, readers and politicians would all suffer.