WHY are we tolerating the inaccurate reporting of policy initiatives during the General Election campaign?
Britain is a union of four nations. Policy matters – particularly those relating to health, social care and education – are devolved to a greater or lesser extent across the four countries. However, unless you are a constitutional policy nerd you won’t necessarily know this. And, bizarrely, you are unlikely to be enlightened if you rely on the British Broadcasting Corporation – a publicly funded body with a central remit of public information and education.
In the short space of time since the current electioneering began there has been a bias in favour of policy stories that relate to England. In some cases stories are told in ways that create the impression that policy initiatives in England apply to Britain as a whole. For example, the terms “England”, “the country” and “the nation” are used interchangeably, giving the impression that England is the default term for Britain.
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This means audiences need to be extra attentive during stories about England to understand that they refer to one nation rather than three or four.
The NHS is a prime example of this inaccurate reporting.
The NHS, as we know, is a major campaigning issue for Labour and the Tories – many promises have been made, but the reporting of these promises
has been biased in favour of policies that will apply only to England. Not enough attention has been paid to what these promises do or don’t mean for the other three countries, or to the fact that very different NHS systems operate in each of the four nations.
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A clear example of this happened recently when the Labour promise of free dental checks was discussed on The Andrew Marr Show on Sunday – at no point was it made clear that free dental checks have been in place in Scotland since 2006!
The recent A&E data is another example. No matter where you live in Britain, local NHS services are under immense pressure, but of all the four nations, hospitals in Scotland seem to have fared the best. Much of the credit for this has been given to the way councils and health services are working together.
However, the media haven’t widely reported this performance differential between Scotland and England. Nor have they made it clear that whilst the Tories and Labour strive to find a solution to the growing number of older people needing care, free personal care in the home is already available in Scotland.
Why does all this matter?
Well, for two key reasons: the potential to enrich stories by comparing and contrasting the performance of different policies in the four nations remains untapped, but, much more importantly, the right of citizens
in the four nations to be properly informed in order to make choices at the ballot box is seriously constrained.
Christine Duncan
Moffat
IF the citizens of England go on insisting that Scotland is subsidised by Westminster then why is it Westminster still refuses to let Scotland leave its precious Union? Are the English so ignorant of how their precious Union works?
It’s time they got off their bahookies and did what Scotland wants. That is organise themselves into an independence campaign. That way, they get to keep all their precious earnings and Treasury bank vault balances and not have to subsidise any of the other Union countries as well as Scotland.
C’mon England, let’s see what you’re made of. England for independence ... YES!
Alan Magnus-Bennett
Fife
Why are you making commenting on The National only available to subscribers?
We know there are thousands of National readers who want to debate, argue and go back and forth in the comments section of our stories. We’ve got the most informed readers in Scotland, asking each other the big questions about the future of our country.
Unfortunately, though, these important debates are being spoiled by a vocal minority of trolls who aren’t really interested in the issues, try to derail the conversations, register under fake names, and post vile abuse.
So that’s why we’ve decided to make the ability to comment only available to our paying subscribers. That way, all the trolls who post abuse on our website will have to pay if they want to join the debate – and risk a permanent ban from the account that they subscribe with.
The conversation will go back to what it should be about – people who care passionately about the issues, but disagree constructively on what we should do about them. Let’s get that debate started!
Callum Baird, Editor of The National
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