Daily Mail NHS Hypocrisy

The level of public trust in our free and fearless press has, according to the latest poll from the Eurobarometer poll published by the EBU, fallen to a level of -60. It is the least trusted press of any European country, and that includes many states that in living memory have been totalitarian dictatorships. But at least the Daily Mail is trying to restore some faith in the print media with its campaign to bring much-needed equipment to the NHS.

Or rather, that is the impression the inmates of the Northcliffe House bunker would like to portray, today’s front page proclaiming “Pictured: first NHS nurse in Mail Force’s PPE gear … SHE’S SAFE … THANKS TO MAIL’S £1m AIRLIFT … STANDING delightedly in her new overalls, nurse Vicky Burns voiced the sentiments of all her colleagues yesterday, declaring ‘Can we just say a big thank you’”. Heartwarming stuff.

Gone were all the NHS-bashing hit pieces, not least those that followed the opening ceremony of the 2012 London Olympics. No more scare stories about hospital superbugs. No more stories claiming that parents are having to take sick children out of the country for treatment. No more hatchet jobs on numbers of managers. The only problem was that, even now, the Mail was speaking with forked tongue.

Guy Adams (Toby Young's ideal job share)

Turn to Page 13 of today’s print edition (the story, with slightly different wording, is online) and you see the Mail playing the other side of the field. “How WAS flagship BBC show infiltrated by the Left? When Panorama turned its guns on the PPE crisis, five medics savaged the Tories' approach. Yet they ALL had Labour links”.

Guy Adams, retained by the Mail for an obscene amount of money so he can hatchet to order, has told readers “The deadly shortage of PPE in our hospitals and care homes is a national tragedy that the Mail - and its readers - are working tirelessly to fix through the charity Mail Force … But our duty to hold the Government to account is tempered by realism … And the Mail’s criticism has been levelled fairly”. As opposed to, er, what?

“A different attitude seems to prevail at the BBC Panorama programme … all five of the doctors and nurses Panorama chose to interview were longstanding Labour Party activists or supporters. This was not shared with viewers, in what appears to be a flagrant breach of BBC guidelines”. Quite apart from Adams being so desperate he cribs from the perpetually thirsty Paul Staines and his rabble at the Guido Fawkes blog, there is a problem here.

And that is the proclamation of front line workers as national heroes on the front page, while on inside pages kicking the crap out of them for daring to have their own views. Yiannis Baboulias was unimpressed. “Are we pretending that Labour is now some sort of illegal group? Why does it matter otherwise?” It doesn’t. The Panorama revelations, not made by the interviewees, stand on their own. Adams is an unprincipled shit.

Rachel Shabi mused “Apart from anything else, I don't get the cognitive dissonance that allows for: NHS staff are our heroes, champions and let us clap for them, but also: the ones that complain about PPE are awful lefty activists”. And campaigning group Hacked Off pointed out “If the Mail is so concerned it can write to Ofcom: if the individuals named and attacked in the Mail’s coverage have concerns, they may as well write to Santa”.

The Daily Mail is right behind the NHS. Providing staff vote how the Mail tells them to.

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