10 February 2009 by Mark White - © Hellmail.co.uk

I imagine that like most of the advertising industry, newspapers are under just as much pressure as everyone else to prove their worth but the Mirror newspaper's reporting on Royal Mail is hardly investigative journalism.

Tabloids have a history of skirting around the truth and in some cases simply make stories up since any payouts in court cases rarely match the money they can make from actually selling newspapers.

I refer of course to its onslaught on the costs surrounding Royal Mail's new headquarters, and an apparently leaked document which suggests that 16,000 workers are to be kicked into touch to save money. All exciting stuff, but I suspect one has to read between the lines here. It doesn't exactly meet the crtitia of investigative journalism but does meet all the requirements of sensationalist reporting. Thats not to say it doesn't have elements of truth somewhere in all the venom, but its very tabloid all the same with techniques employed that lend themselves rather well to poking fires, particularly with the government on the back foot on the privatisation of Royal Mail.

In its favour, it does score numerous points in terms of mud-stirring at a difficult time for both Royal Mail and the CWU, if not Brown himself, so one can excuse its reporting style. It is in the business of selling newspapers after all. The trouble is, it has all the hallmarks of riot incitement and doesn't quite ring true.

"Theres no smoke without fire" and other cliches will fit neatly into all of this I'm sure, but most delivery offices are already stretched and working to tight budget constraints. Staff will go, no doubt about that, but much of the losses are part of its restructuring of mail centres, and while unpopular, Royal Mail has a sorting network that no longer reflects a modern postal service and many are to be amalgamated to meet the demands it now faces.

I'm not sure whether discussions over modernisation this week between Royal Mail bosses and the CWU were to be conducted over a fish & chip supper wrapped in copies of the Mirror newspaper, but for the moment talks are said to have ceased. No suprise there then.

I can at least take some comfort from knowing I haven't wasted my money on a tabloid in the first place and as a source of hard facts or even a negotiating tool, it has to be on a par with "piss poor".

© Hellmail.co.uk (10 February 2009)

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