Don't bother

On the front page of the Telegraph website is the headline "50p tax to stifle economy", which carries the explanation:

New 50p tax rate to stifle economy and increase unemployment.

When you click on the link, the story itself, which is about consumer/personal finance instead of economics, suddenly uses inverted commas and the sub-headline reveals that it is based on a "study" by the Taxpayers Alliance.

No need to read any further.

Nationalise away!

Also on Comment is Free, Matthew Elliott of the Taxpayer's Alliance says taxpayers should not have to bail out banks. As the standfirst puts it (I can't be bothered to read the article)

There is no reason why wholesale nationalisation should be the outcome of the current economic turmoil

Well, he's right on the first point, but if we are giving them our money, we should nationalise them. At the moment, we taxpayers seem to have a lot of the risk and none of the profit.

Exploiting churnalism.

Meanwhile the Independent has a piece on the "Taxpayers' Alliance", which could be called a campaign, but the idea that it is a grassroots alliance is just a piece of spin.

The TPA is quite blatant about how it exploits churnalism:

"What we've tried to do since 2004 is understand how the media works, so we've tried to give news stories to journalists on a plate. Journalists have 101 things to do in their day and don't often have time to read long and dry reports from think-thanks. So we use the Freedom of Information Act..."

That would be using taxpayers' money then.

Paul Lashmar, an investigative reporter and lecturer in journalism at University College Falmouth blames the state of the media:

"What you see now is journalists who are grateful for news which is almost perfectly packaged to go into the paper with a ready top line. In that sense, journalism is becoming very passive. It is a processor of other people's information rather than being engaged in actively seeking out and determining what the truth of a situation is in an energetic and inquisitive way."