The Taxpayers’ Alliance is a case study of poor journalism. The Guardian has today revealed that some of its supporters do not pay tax in Britain and that it does not have formal representation on its board of any ordinary taxpayers. But the real scandal is the large amount of unquestioning media coverage of the organisation.
The Guardian exposure is welcome and the scrutiny important. But this investigation would never have warranted a frontpage story if journalists had given the Taxpayers Alliance proper scrutiny to begin with.
I do not object to the fact that the Taxpayers Alliance exists. I think it had done a good job, in some circumstances, of exposing waste in the public sector. It has certainly sharpened the mind of some public servants; the exposure that the alliance brings mostly makes for better decision making. I even admire the way they have built such an incredible public profile.
But I do not agree with everything the Taxpayers Alliance does and I particularly enjoy the work of The Other Taxpayers Alliance in shedding light on some of its more wrong-headed reports.
The real scandal of the Taxpayers Alliance is just how much media coverage it has received – without proper investigation. The organisation’s research is reported frequently and prominently, the Daily Mail (517 articles) and The Sun (207 articles) have written about the alliance, on average, more than once a day over the last year. The Guardian admits to 29 different reports in the last year about the organisation.
Proper journalism would have asked some searching questions of the organisation:
- Who do you represent?
- How many taxpayers are members of your alliance?
- How did you conduct your research?
- Who are your funders?
And with the answers they received, journalists may have treated the work of the Taxpayers Alliance with the objectivity and scepticism that it often deserves.
There are no shortage of campaigning organisations like the Taxpayers Alliance. Norman Brennan’s Victims of Crime Trust is another that receives disproportionate, and unquestioning coverage. These organisations flourish because they peddle stories which go with the grain of journalism, provide quotes which are easily obtainable and strident headlines which fit with the editorial agenda.
But journalism was always meant to be about more than reporting the best press releases. Perhaps the Guardian’s report will lead to journalists thinking twice before running their reports without further scrutiny.
Related posts:
- Journalism matters but so do big news organisations
- Why Jan Moir’s apology shouldn’t be ‘case closed’
- Victims of Crime Trust mystery
- Journalists Liverpool fans can trust
- David Cameron is a hypocrite
Tags: Journalism, Taxpayers Alliance, The Guardian
Tantalising article -but it doesn’t tell us why the Taxpayers’ Alliance deserves such scepticism, which Monaco tax- fugitives (Firoz Kassam?) are lurking in its anonymous ranks,and what whoppers it has been perpetrating upon an unsuspecting public.
That’s what a journalist would have given us, if they had the facts…..
[...] Trust, like the Taxpayers Alliance, went for quite a while without any real media scrutiny. Nick Davies’ book exposing PR and a failure to fact-check in the newspaper industry was [...]