It must be a wonderful time for news writers, their chance to write fiction, where, "never let the truth get in the way of a good story," becomes the motto.
If you know me personally, then you will probably have guessed that you should take everything I write with a large pinch of salt. I might not actually be telling you about my life, as it actually happened because I would never let the truth (or even politeness) get in the way of a good joke but you do expect journalists to do some fact checking.
In the last few weeks we heard about the things that could be in George Osbourne's Austerity Budget; terrible things that will make everyone except his friends suffer. We heard about the abolition of the Human Rights Act and its replacement by the sensitive and brilliant Michael Gove, who definitely won't have any trouble with those push-over lawyers the way he did with the tough teachers. We heard how Nicky Morgan plans to make the school day run from 8am to 6pm with no holidays, so that hard working families can work harder and forget they have children. We heard how John Whittingdale plans to get rid of the BBC because the licence fee is the worst idea since the poll tax, which as he was private secretary to the Prime Minister when it was introduced I can only assume he means it's a good idea. We read stories that Caroline Dinage, as equalities minister planned to ban gay marriage. Jeremy Hunt, we heard, announced a plan for hospital bed-sharing to ensure that the NHS remained free at the point of delivery, since the information of how to get the NHS to pay for your Calpol from Boots went viral on Facebook. Whoops! Sorry, there I go again: making stuff up for the sake of a joke but it doesn't sound very different to some of the things I've read.
Since the loss of newspaper circulation many journalists have had to find other work and many have ended up in PR. They write press releases that reporters on newspapers won't check because they trust that the NCTJ qualified contributor has followed the ethics of their training and because there isn't time now that they are doing the job of ten men (which does seem to be possible for female journalists).
These spinning stories do worry me a little. When, whatever these departments make their real changes we will all say, "oh that's not too bad. I'm happy to have gynaecology consultants replaced by plumbers. Better than sharing a bed!"
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