The freedom of the press - to lie

The owner of the Daily Express is Richard Desmond.  The editor is Hugh Whittow.  The writer of a particularly shameless article today is Giles Sheldrick.  I mention these names because newspaper articles don't come about by accident.  They are the result of deliberate decisions by men who consider themselves free to debase the whole concept of truth.  This is propaganda of the most egregious kind, peddling an interpretation of figures which have been shown to be false.  These men don't have to explain why they do this.  They are not answerable to the people they insult and denigrate.  They just make money.
If you have read the article, you might also read this piece in the New Statesman; or, if that's a bit left-wing for your taste, this one in the Economist.  You might also read FullFact's analysis of the figures, written back on 24 April.  But the circulation of the Express is nearly 600,000, and presumably those people read it because it confirms their prejudices, not for truth.
Related to all this is an interesting piece on the Left Foot Forward website, which graphs the number of times the word "scrounger" has been used in British newspapers since 1994.  It takes off steeply from 2010. Some of the comments under the article rubbish the accuracy of the exercise, but it remains fascinating.

PS:  I later discovered this, even worse, article in the Daily Mail.  They've added a bogus "workshy map of Britain" to fuel the lie of those "found fit to work".  It's breathtaking in its sheer dishonesty.  The writer is someone called Amanda Williams.  I wonder how much she was paid for this scurrilous trash.  These two papers between them continue to make Britain a nastier place than even the politicians know how to do.