How the government controls the press

An article in today's Daily Telegraph by Julia Langdon "revealed" that spending on government spin had trebled under Labour and taxpayers are now supporting an army of more than 3,200 press officers.

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When Labour came to power in 1997, just over 300 fully-fledged press officers were working in Whitehall (although that figure excluded a small number of other public relations staff).

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Furthermore, the amount being spent on government advertising, marketing and public relations had risen three-fold since Mr Blair entered No 10.

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The Central Office of Information's PR, advertising and marketing budget had soared from £111 million in 1997 to £322 million last year.

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Julia Langdon is a former political correspondent of The Guardian, and political editor of the Daily Mirror and The Sunday Telegraph. She is now free-lance and is often to be seen (or heard) on the BBC, hosting a variety of political programmes.
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The government's 'press officers' churn out press releases by the thousands - so say nothing of posts on their hundreds of websites - and other hacks do use them.

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There are thousands of trade journals – many of them staffed by little more than a man and a dog – and the torrent of press releases emanating from the various ministries find their way into these, often with only the bare minimum of editing.Then, the news agencies also pick them up and, with often minimal re-writing, send them out on the wires where they are used, second-hand, by national and local newspapers – the circulation of the latter, cumulatively far exceeding that of the nationals. By and large, the specialist correspondents on the nationals rely on their diet of press releases – often sent in advance of the general release, as a "reward" for good behaviour.

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For these and others, government statements and press releases are "safe" - you don't have to do any fact-checking before you quote them. So our little darlings in the media carry on churning out government spin for all these years, recycling press releases instead of going out and getting their own stories.

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Now that the government is getting more reticent about certain aspects of its policies, the milk in the teat is drying and the likes of Julia Langdon are throwing a hissy. They are spitting their dummies (pacifiers, for our American friends) out of the pram.

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The government employs thousands of press officers because it is in its interest to do so and the media does not complain too loudly or too long because it suits it as well. Both print and broadcast media have been shedding journalists in droves and as long as they have a cheap, reliable source of copy, they may rock the boat occasionally, but they are not going to capsize it.

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Julia Langdon in an op-ed