Martin Hadfield was 20 years old when he died. He got a job as a landscape gardener when he left school but lost his job in April last year. His step-father said that, "Martin never claimed any money or benefits in his life. He got nothing off the government and was proud not to." In the space of 3 months he applied for about 40 jobs, unsuccessfully. Before a meeting at the Bury Jobcentre he updated his CV. But, his step-father claimed, the bureaucracy was "ridiculous" and the meeting "unproductive". The following day Martin Hadfield hanged himself.
How do I know all this? It's in the Express. With no sense of irony, let alone shame, the Express reports the tragic suicide of an unemployed young man, one who was too proud to claim benefits. This is the paper which peddles relentless hatred against the poor and unemployed, which uses a special, vicious language when writing about them. It's the paper which would have classed this tragic young man as a feckless, idle, work-shy scrounger if he'd had the temerity to claim benefits (sorry, hand-outs). Presumably its editor Hugh Whittow makes no connection between this death and the abuse vomited by his "journalists". There won't be even a tinge of embarrassment at Express HQ.
Showing posts with label Hugh Whittow. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Hugh Whittow. Show all posts
Tuesday, 20 May 2014
Friday, 30 August 2013
Hatred and the Express
I'm increasingly baffled by the Daily Express and its editor Hugh Whittow. He appears to have three main preoccupations: 1) the death of Princess Diana 2) exaggerated weather forecasts and 3) hatred of all benefits claimants. If he could get all three into one story he would no doubt be delighted.
That hatred of people who claim benefits - and "hatred" really is not too strong a word - is now descending into lies calculated to make targets out of the sick, the disabled and the unemployed. There are writers (I won't call them journalists) on the paper who are happy to cobble stories which are becoming increasingly bizarre.
Take Alison Little and Jan Disley. They produced a piece yesterday which conflates two bits of "news", with no justification whatever. One was about a fraudster who faces jail for claiming around £94k that she wasn't entitled to. Quite right too. Nobody, least of all genuine claimants, would ever defend her behaviour. But how's this for a headline: "Benefits Britain shame: Welfare cheat swindles £94k while 3.5m homes have NO ONE working". Not only does the one have nothing to do with the other. The Express has cited what was actually claimed as good news for the government by everyone else. And in its first three sentences the writers manage to imply that the workless household figures are getting worse, "out of control", when in fact they're improving. The Indus Delta site has a neat summary, taken from the ONS figures. There's a sort of acknowledgement of this by the Express: "Although the number of families dependent on welfare was very slightly down from last year's 3.7m, opponents of Britain's benefits culture said the official figures were still extremely worrying." And those opponents include, unsurprisingly, the the boss of the odious and misnamed Taxpayers' Alliance. So, whatever it takes to stoke the hatred is permissible.
But that's not enough. Today a writer called Giles Sheldrick produced another bizarre piece: "scarcely-believable excuses of benefit cheats revealed". (Note that "scarcely-believable". Not brave enough to say outright that they were lying.) The piece is scattered with the familiar hate phrases; "generous handouts" and "lifelong layabouts" are just two. They talk about "some of Britain's most deceitful individuals hellbent on conning the welfare state out of £1.2bn", without any explanation of where that figure comes from. They issue "a fresh call to hard-working and honest families to 'shop' those who view welfare as a limitless cash machine", linking dishonesty and unemployment. And, despicably, they say that IDS's reforms come from "frustration that a generation of lifelong layabouts trapped on benefits creates an annual £208bn welfare bill - £1 of every £3 raise in tax revenue". Note the carelessness of the verb "trapped" when that's not what he means. But, more importantly, note the way in which the benefits bill, which includes pensions and working tax credits, is said to be spent entirely on layabouts.
We heard this week that attacks, verbal and physical, on disabled people are increasing as morons, stirred up by this sort of vicious and dishonest writing, accuse them of being scroungers and worse. That's the tip of the iceberg. Hatred begets hate crimes. Why Whittow is doing this I can't imagine. Maybe it's down to his paper's owner, Richard Desmond. But the freedom of the press doesn't cover the freedom to spread this sort of vicious dishonesty.
That hatred of people who claim benefits - and "hatred" really is not too strong a word - is now descending into lies calculated to make targets out of the sick, the disabled and the unemployed. There are writers (I won't call them journalists) on the paper who are happy to cobble stories which are becoming increasingly bizarre.
Take Alison Little and Jan Disley. They produced a piece yesterday which conflates two bits of "news", with no justification whatever. One was about a fraudster who faces jail for claiming around £94k that she wasn't entitled to. Quite right too. Nobody, least of all genuine claimants, would ever defend her behaviour. But how's this for a headline: "Benefits Britain shame: Welfare cheat swindles £94k while 3.5m homes have NO ONE working". Not only does the one have nothing to do with the other. The Express has cited what was actually claimed as good news for the government by everyone else. And in its first three sentences the writers manage to imply that the workless household figures are getting worse, "out of control", when in fact they're improving. The Indus Delta site has a neat summary, taken from the ONS figures. There's a sort of acknowledgement of this by the Express: "Although the number of families dependent on welfare was very slightly down from last year's 3.7m, opponents of Britain's benefits culture said the official figures were still extremely worrying." And those opponents include, unsurprisingly, the the boss of the odious and misnamed Taxpayers' Alliance. So, whatever it takes to stoke the hatred is permissible.
But that's not enough. Today a writer called Giles Sheldrick produced another bizarre piece: "scarcely-believable excuses of benefit cheats revealed". (Note that "scarcely-believable". Not brave enough to say outright that they were lying.) The piece is scattered with the familiar hate phrases; "generous handouts" and "lifelong layabouts" are just two. They talk about "some of Britain's most deceitful individuals hellbent on conning the welfare state out of £1.2bn", without any explanation of where that figure comes from. They issue "a fresh call to hard-working and honest families to 'shop' those who view welfare as a limitless cash machine", linking dishonesty and unemployment. And, despicably, they say that IDS's reforms come from "frustration that a generation of lifelong layabouts trapped on benefits creates an annual £208bn welfare bill - £1 of every £3 raise in tax revenue". Note the carelessness of the verb "trapped" when that's not what he means. But, more importantly, note the way in which the benefits bill, which includes pensions and working tax credits, is said to be spent entirely on layabouts.
We heard this week that attacks, verbal and physical, on disabled people are increasing as morons, stirred up by this sort of vicious and dishonest writing, accuse them of being scroungers and worse. That's the tip of the iceberg. Hatred begets hate crimes. Why Whittow is doing this I can't imagine. Maybe it's down to his paper's owner, Richard Desmond. But the freedom of the press doesn't cover the freedom to spread this sort of vicious dishonesty.
Saturday, 4 May 2013
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.
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.
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