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

Read more: 

Tory press repeats Osborne’s lies about Greece and borrowing

The Sun won’t tell you why train staff are striking. So we will

Sign up for our weekly email by clicking here.

10 Responses to “Tory press shirks its duty and waves pom-poms for Osborne’s budget”

1. 

   Cole

   July 9, 2015

   So the BBC is ‘Labour’ because they make some effort to report the news rather than be cheerleaders for the Conservatives? Actually, they’re they’re generally quite right wing, not least as they tend to pick up stuff from the Tory press. I guess right wingers won’t be happy until the Beeb is as servile as broadcasters in North Korea.

2. 

   Harold

   July 9, 2015

   Two questions, firstly if this is such a great policy why was it not in the manifesto and debated at the election 60 odd days ago? secondly, when every other party suggested the deficit could be reduced over a slightly longer period, the Tory press were up in arms and the Conservative Party were near hysterical at the mere thought of such a suggestion, but only a few weeks later it is not even worth of a mention when the same Mr Osbourne decides to take another year. One final question I cannot recall the traditional Tory press ever criticising a Conservative budget, can anyone?

3. 

   MarthaFErvin

   July 11, 2015

   Best Quality performance leftfootforward…. <…… Find Here
   

4. 

   TeresaBCruz

   July 12, 2015

   xcc

5. Tory press loved 'dragon-slayer' Osborne's budgets - why is Hammond getting panned? | Left Foot Forward

   March 9, 2017

   […] for Osborne’s July budget last year, the paper splashed with the Chancellor dancing for joy, in what I described at the time […]

Comments are closed.