Magical powers employed to confect a Labour row that never happened
The Telegraph newspaper has discovered the power of telepathy.
On page 4 today, a curious little story appears: ‘Harman moves to put the knife into Burnham’s leadership bid’.
Sounds like big news. Tell me more.
“Harriet Harman yesterday appeared to call on Labour supporters not to back Andy Burnham as the next leader of the party.
Miss Harman, who took over as interim leader in the wake of Ed Miliband’s resignation, urged people not to vote for the candidate ‘who makes you feel comfortable’.
Mr Burnham, the favourite to be elected leader, has repeatedly been criticised as the ‘comfort candidate’ and ‘simply another Ed Miliband’.”
‘Repeatedly been criticised’ by whom? No source is given.
And that ‘appeared’ in the first line is delicious!
Harman’s full quote, given later in the story, was vague and boring enough to be acquitted of the charge of referring to any particular candidate.
Yet somehow, the Telegraph knows she had someone in mind, and who that was, and published a story saying so, based on ‘repeated criticism’ by… well, we don’t know who.
Is this news?
After Harman’s quote, the story goes on to say: ‘Mr Burnham responded that he opposed the Tories’ cuts to tax child tax credits despite Miss Harman’s claims Labour would support them.’
Burnham was responding to Harman’s position on child tax credits, not to her remarks about ‘comfortable’ candidates.
The story makes it seem as though he opposed the cuts in response to Harman’s non-criticism of himself! This is very misleading.
Yes, he ‘responded’ to something she said in a BBC interview – just not the thing the Telegraph chose to highlight.
So first the paper claims to know the mind of Harman, then it uses this to confect a row where none exists, mixing it up with a genuine row about tax credits.
If that wasn’t enough, the story ends with this:
A source close to Miss Harman said: “Harriet is not endorsing any candidate. Her comments were not about Andy.”
So for anyone who reads to the end, they’ll find the story is pure speculation, contested by the person whose mind the paper ‘appears’ to have read.
The Telegraph has run bizarre attacks on Andy Burnham before.
But how can the Telegraph justify publishing speculation as news?
Adam Barnett is a staff writer at Left Foot Forward. Follow MediaWatch on Twitter
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12 Responses to “Telegraph reads Harriet Harman’s mind in claim she ‘knifed’ Andy Burnham”
Matthew Blott
That simply is not true.
Patrick Nelson
Maybe not in Blottland.
Ian
Nobody is more entitled than the private sector, persistently draining government coffers via subsidies, tax breaks, deliberate tax loopholes and other corporate welfare measures.
That all costs many, many times more than any benefits cheating.
Ian
They ought to be more scared of Jeremy Corbyn at the minute. He’s the only one has te policies the majority agree with, like renationalising, NHS etc. The others are just right wing quislings based on hat I’ve heard so far.
Patrick Nelson
I think the reason that they are scared of Andy Burnham isn’t so much that he is very left wing, but rather it is that he is moderately left wing and also a quite realistic election winner – the same story as with Ed Miliband, who – despite their official derision – used to give them the heebie jeebies.
I think that if they thought Jeremy Corbyn was liable to win anything they would be directing their pens at him more already. It doesn’t mean that they are correct in their assessment though, but personally I think it would require a bit of a popular paradigm shift in the Labour party and the country as a whole for Jeremy Corbyn to end up in Downing street – but it’s not impossible so long as the Tories make a huge mess of things in the near future.