Why does the press continue to swallow Government spin on Covid?

Article placement and headline wording are important matters in the newspaper industry. The responsibility of choosing them should be taken more seriously – not simply as the Government would like it.

I was surprised to read on the cover of The Daily Telegraph on Thursday that there was a ‘race to roll out the Oxford jab to stave off full lockdown’ (my emphasis). Everyone with half a brain knew that day that the country was already in full lockdown, in all but name.

Only 2,000 people living on the Isle of Scilly escaped the Government’s toughest two lockdown ‘tiers’. But The Daily Telegraph pushed its coverage of this fact to page seven.

On the next page, it celebrated the Prime Minister’s last-minute deal with the European Union: ‘‘A free country at last’ as Gordian knot tying UK to Continent is cut’ (my emphasis), its headline read. The editor must have seen the irony when choosing this.

Article placement and headline wording are important matters in the newspaper industry. The responsibility of choosing them should be taken more seriously – not simply as the Government would like it.