Doing McSweeney's dirty work

If you're a hack who regularly finds yourself doing the government's dirty work for it, you need to ask yourself if you are much more than a spin doctor, one step removed.

Despite some great journalism in the past, this is a question that Guardian political editor Pippa Crerar needs to start asking herself.

Take this piece of spin: Ministers privately ruling out scrapping two-child benefits cap and particularly the opening two paragraphs.

Ministers are privately ruling out scrapping the two-child benefit cap despite warnings from charities that a failure to do so could result in the highest levels of child poverty since records began.

Government sources said charities and Labour MPs who were concerned that wider benefit cuts would push more families into poverty should “read the tea leaves” over Labour’s plans.

We start off with a claim that ministers plural are saying something but they then become "Government Sources", who both/all have the same single quote attributed to them. 

Something doesn't add up. Then:

"The cap is popular with key voters, who see it as a matter of fairness,” one source said. 

Given that this - and the obsession with "key voters" - is a key Morgan McSweeney claim, we can probably assume that he is the plural ministers and the plural sources. But in any case, what evidence does Crerar give us that her mysterious sources speak authoritatively?

And there's the rub. If they aren't speaking on behalf of the government, the story is worthless, and if they are they aren't really sources. They are just getting a free hit to put scripted quotes into a newspaper to justify government policy.

Which brings us to education secretary Bridget Phillipson on BBC Breakfast this morning. She's not only an actual minister, but the co-chair of the government's child poverty task force.

Asked if the government has ruled out living the two-child benefit cap, she replied: "Our work is still underway; we've ruled out nothing in any area."

Has this shot down Crerar's story or is this just an example of government by cowardice, where she does the government's dirty work for it, helping it say one thing publicly and something else in public?

This takes back to the opening few words of her piece and indeed the headline. Are ministers "privately" ruling out scrapping the two-child benefit cap?

Almost certainly not. Even if it is plural minsters saying it, they are not doing so "privately". 

If you say something to a journalist with the clear intention that it gets into a newspaper, you do not do so privately.

The intro to the piece should probably read something like: "Someone in government is spinning a line to distract from warnings from charities that a failure to scrap the two-child benefit cap could result in the highest levels of child poverty since records began."