Британские СМИ ошибочно представили кризис стоимости жизни как краткосрочный шок, утверждает исследование

THE UK mainstream media’s framing of the cost of living crisis as a short-term shock has been “totally rejected” by the public, with journalists accused of relying on a “narrow” set of sources by experts. Dr Catherine Happer and Dr Lluis de Nadal Alsina spoke to The National Podcast about research by the Glasgow University Media Group into how people perceived the media’s coverage of the crisis. Through looking in detail at two years’ worth of press coverage, they found that the UK media implied the situation had “come from nowhere” and failed to communicate a series of poor political decisions over decades that people far and wide believed had led to them struggling with their finances. The research – compiled in a book called Bad News On The Cost Of Living Crisis – also found there had been a heavy focus on how the crisis had affected middle-income earners who suddenly had financial concerns they hadn’t encountered before rather than on those who had been living in poverty since before the crisis began. READ MORE: Infamous far-right activist to speak at Trump Turnberry this week The pair claimed this had come about because of the “narrow” set of sources mainstream journalists often rely on along with a potential bias against reporting on long-running issues. Happer told the podcast: “What we found was the way in which the media was constructing the cost of living crisis – that the crisis came from nowhere and it sort of landed in the politicians’ laps and they had to kind of deal with it – was totally rejected by audience members. “To them, this was absolutely the result of political decision-making over a long period of time, with some people going back to austerity and some people going back even further than that. [There was] a sense that politics had been representing the wealthiest in society and the public interest had been dismissed, and so people were very much not only rejecting that but moving to other sources of information [that were] challenging what was presented to them.” De Nadal Alsina highlighted how the group had picked up on focused coverage on the “newly-squeezed” and solutions that appeared to suggest the public were guilty of irresponsible spending. “The mainstream media had framed the crisis as a short-term event caused by external shocks like the war in Ukraine, for example, and what was ignored or omitted was decades of austerity, of underinvestment, that had weakened public services and stripped away the safety net that people could have relied on to absorb those shocks,” he said. “Consistent with that was an emphasis on the impact on the ‘newly-squeezed’ – the middle-income earners who are experiencing hardship for the first time during the cost of living crisis as opposed to those have been living in poverty as a result of those political decisions long before the crisis hit. “The solutions that were offered that featured most prominently in media coverage were also consistent with that short-term framing, because they were solutions that put responsibility on the individuals to tighten their belts. READ MORE: Thomas Kerr accused of 'fearmongering' after 'Glasgow walkabout' “We saw lots of tips on saving, lots of advice on responsible spending, as if the problem were bad spending choices as opposed to decades of bad political decisions.” In exploring why the media had not touched on how complex issues like austerity and the selling off of council houses had sparked this crisis, the pair suggested it was because of the small circle of sources mainstream reporters tend to turn to for an explanation. Happer also suggested journalists tend to buy into an “ideological conformity” about sensible politics. “They [journalists] speak to people from think tanks, they take their line from the politicians and the briefings that the politicians give. It’s a very narrow set of voices that we hear from,” she said. “They’re not looking at the historic structural factors, so the quotes they use, the sources they use, the evidence they use is coming from this very narrow spectrum.” She went on: “The solutions being posed by journalists are coming from this narrow set of sources and a very ideological conformity around fiscal responsibility.” De Nadal Alsina added: “Journalists also tend to focus on what’s new and that, in a way, creates a bias towards novelty and less of an instinct to report on issues that have been running for decades.” He suggested too that journalism is "mostly" a middle-class profession, explaining why it may have been told "as a middle-class story".