Newspapers should report and scrutinise, not spin or cheer the government
What is the role of a national newspaper when the government announces a budget?
Probably two things:
1. Report what’s in the budget in a clear, simple, but accurate way.
2. Scrutinise what’s in it, the claims made about it by the government, and the way it has been presented.
What the papers ought not to do is spin the budget to make the government look good, or try to condition what the public thinks about it in the manner of a used car salesman.
Most of the papers have given a fairly clear and accurate (though heavily spun) account of the budget’s contents. Where they fall down is taking a scalpel to it and the spin put on it by the government.
On the contrary, most papers today actually cheer and laud the government for giving us such a wonderful budget.
The Daily Mail, not a fan of this government, ran with ‘Fearless George slays the dragons‘, along with a cartoon of chancellor Osborne as the English patron saint. (The Sun did the same thing before the election.)
It’s very unusual for the Mail to run a Sun-like cartoon on its front page, in a space usually reserved for pictures of attractive (or distraught) women.
The Sun itself hailed the budget as ‘The Well Fair State‘ (get it?) adding: ‘More pay, tax cut, less dole’.
The Telegraph’s headline is simply the name of a Tory policy (‘From welfare to work‘), with a second story welcoming Osborne’s pledge of 2 percent defence spending.
The Express was the least restrained, literally cheering for the budget, with: ‘Hooray! It’s pay rises all round‘.
Meanwhile the supposedly less partial (but Murdoch-owned) Times ran with ‘Higher wages and welfare cuts in Britain’s new deal‘.
The headline bizarrely invokes US president Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal of the 1930s, a massive expansion of the role of government which saw the introduction of social security – the equivalent of Britain’s welfare state.
In presenting the budget in a way that tells readers how they ought to think about it, the papers are certainly in well-trodden ground.
But we shouldn’t get so used to this dereliction of duty that we accept this as the standard for national journalism – let alone that we passively accept its insulting message.
Adam Barnett is a staff writer at Left Foot Forward. Follow MediaWatch on Twitter
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10 Responses to “Tory press shirks its duty and waves pom-poms for Osborne’s budget”
Jacko
What did the Mirror and the Guardian say? Did they tell readers how they ought to think? Were they guilty of a ‘dereliction of duty’ too? Or doesn’t your moralizing apply to those newspapers because you agree with them?
CaseyAAvera
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Selohesra
Tory press may love it but Labour BBC don’t. Pienaar waxing lyrical about Hatties performance yesterday (must have been watching a different speech to me) and ever willing to wheel out a few hard luck cases rather than discussing principles
Matthew Blott
I’m not the Graun’s biggest fan but it does at least separate news and content and it never acted as a cheerleader for the last Labour government. I’ll concede the Mirror doesn’t.
gunnerbear
“The Sun itself hailed the budget as ‘The Well Fair State‘ (get it?) adding: ‘More pay, tax cut, less dole’.” And the issue is that is what people want – thanks to the Budget – and the Lefties are going to hate this, where I live the benefits cap will be below the average wage for the area. It will be impossible to get more on just benefits than someone working………..I reckon that’s going to be widely popular move locally for two reasons……..the local MP (Red) has told me – when I’ve challenged him – that the Benefits Cap is a popular policy and ….electoral maths……Blue + Purple = more than Red in the area I live. In the ’15 election UKIP came third out of no where and this is in an area that has been Red for decades…….