What Free Press??

My disgust at our media has only grown over the last four years. Of all the things that make me sit in horrified wonder throughout this whole rancid mess, it's the lack of balanced reporting over Iain Duncan-Smith's "Welfare Reforms" and particularly, how they are decimating the lives of sick and disabled people.

Don't believe me? Think I'm paranoid or unreasonable? 

Let me prove it.

In March 2012 you might remember there was a national panic over some faulty breast implants called "PIP" some 47,000 UK women had these implants and had to consider having the implants removed.

So these women had CHOSEN to have serious surgery to get larger breasts and then had to face that they might need MORE surgery to put things right. A terrible story, certainly, but one of vanity matched with incompetence.

In 2010, it just so happened that the new coalition announced that they would scrap the main disability benefit (Disability Living Allowance or DLA) entirely and replace it, coincidentally with something called "PIP" (Personal Independence Payments). Incidentally, it wasn't in either coalition party manifesto.

Under these reforms some 3.2 MILLION sick and disabled people would be affected and a horrific 600,000 were projected to lose the help they get to leave their homes or pay for care. They would lose in many cases the very right to any kind of social life. They would lose their independence, their freedom to do the things everyone else takes for granted. When the new benefit was announced it was claimed that 20% of the existing "caseload" would be cut.

The DWP have since said

“We were aware that the vast majority of recipients of DLA were individuals with genuine health conditions and disabilities and genuine need, and that removing or reducing that benefit may affect their daily lives.”

Now, even if you don't open links that often, PLEASE click on the following three. The first is a page search from Channel 4 News which shows that 8 out of 10 of the stories returned are about a 3 month cosmetic surgery scandal, yet just 2 are about a 4 year welfare story that has now fallen into total crisis, leaving a quarter of a million sick and disabled people stuck in limbo with no assessments and no payments. 

http://www.channel4.com/news/search/?coreSiteName=news&freetext=PIP

The second is BBC News. This is a much more complicated picture as the results come up in date order. However, even now, in 2014, 2 years after the breast implant scandal, there are as many stories relating to that as to the disability benefit. More tellingly, look through the links and you'll see that incredibly rarely did the disability story make it from the website to the actual news. There are few video links whereas there are many more for the breast implants. 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/search/news/?q=PIP&search_form=in-page-search-form

Finally, and most spectacularly, here is ITV News. By the time I got bored of counting there were no fewer than 15 stories about the breast implants and just one - yes one - about the disability benefit affecting 3.2 million sick and disabled people and plunging further into utter chaos by the day

http://www.bbc.co.uk/search/news/?q=PIP&search_form=in-page-search-form

** Sky's news search is so appalling it just brings up random stories of all kinds. 

How do I sum up? My horror is so great, my fury so overwhelming, I just don't have the words. 

But I suppose I sum up by making it very, very, clear that it is only a matter of time before the full horror of these failures is known. I predict that by the end of this year, the misinformation and chaos at the DWP will be fully revealed and the public might be pretty eager to know how on earth all of this went on, under their very noses, yet no-one told them about it. That barely one journalist made it his or her business to challenge IDS properly or stand up to his bullying. 

Not one scheduler made it his or her business to make sure disability stories were slotted in, not one producer cared enough to make sure that sick and disabled people were heard. Barely any interviewers were brave enough to stand their ground, live on air and none would do so repeatedly.

Shame on them all.