Institute For Fiscal Studies does #watchdog journalism in election time
In this pre #ukelection2024 period, where there are debates between politicians and manifesto launches, the role of journalism and holding politicians to account on what they say and promise is crucial.
Some journalists do it accurately, others don't and give politicians a free pass. Others, especially in the UK #printmedia are partisans and will support a particular political party on the basis of ideology, and avoid scrutiny of their preferred party, or at least bury it within the paper, pages away from the headline, whilst subjecting the party they don't like to overbearing scrutiny.
Sometimes politicians actively avoid scrutiny by skipping hard-hitting interviews. Think of Boris Johnson missing the debate on climate change, and then skipping the Andrew Neil grilling in 2019.
However, a non-journalistic and non-media company is providing as good a scrutiny of politicians and their economic manifestos, the #thinktank Institute of Fiscal Studies.
The IFS only deals in economics, they don’t take any cultural or civil society policies into account, just numbers.
Each major UK political party has released their manifesto, where they claim its fully costed and they claim X money raised from Y resource will pay for Z policy.
The IFS has stepped in and provided a non-biased review and analysis of each manifesto, from Labour to the Conservatives, to the Greens to Reform and shown firstly, if the money they claim they can raise actually makes sense, and how much money the policy actually needs. Almost in every case, they've found that the maths doesn't add up, and pointed to mathmathical shortfalls, and outlined consequences to those. Some are worse than others by pure maths terms.
This level of analysis I've found extremely enlightening, as it shows an impartial take on expectation vs reality and how far apart they are. This kind of work isn't really journalism, its academic investigation, its economic forecasting, number crunching etc. However, it has the same effect of journalism, and #watchdog journalism a phrase that media academic Silvio Waisbord pioneered, which informs the public on what to expect, based on pure economic analysis.
Whilst it's not journalism in its purest sense, it's been used as a primary source for #journalism, being reported in numerous online publications, bringing it directly to readers who are interested in how promises match up, based on impartial calculations.
In elections especially, we need cold, hard, impartial scrutiny, when so much can be disguised by fanciful oratory, and populist rhetoric. I think these kind of thinktanks boost #publicservicemedia in carrying out watchdog journalism, and make the public aware of exaggerated promises and provide a dose of realism at a time where PR political campaigns are creating a lopsided reality.
#uk #election #politicalmanifestos #publicrelations #economics #economicanalysis #politics