The PR chief of a London borough council has argued that public sector press officers must defend themselves against journalists’ “pointless muck-raking” with Freedom of Information requests, PR Week reports.

“Aspiring reporters are too often spellbound by what they see as inside information that is little more than gossip and conspiracy theories,” Brent Council director of communications Toni McConville said after winning an appeal to the Information Commissioner over a request filed by the Willesden & Brent Times, which had been seeking personal information about two former council employees.