Corporate media outlet BirminghamLive has published another misleading article on the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) Universal Credit. In particular, the site has played into benefit claimant concerns as the Labour Party take to the helm as the new UK government.
Its trash article offers little that it claims in its obtuse headline. However, this isn’t the outlets aim. In reality, it’s a clickbait ploy to bolster readership and revenue. Unfortunately, benefit claimants are the butt of this opportunistic churnalism. Though obviously, it’s not anything we haven’t seen before, countless times.
DWP Universal Credit ‘changes’ under Labour a red herring
The Canary’s Rachel Charlton-Dailey previously referred to BirminghamLive as “vile” and part of the “cesspit media” – and did so for good reason. Notably, the site has stolen her content on not one, but two separate occasions. This included Charlton-Dailey’s personal account about the DWP screwing her over on her Personal Independence Payment (PIP).
The outlet shamelessly used large swathes of her article as quotes, presumably to get around plagiarism accusations. Appallingly, it did so without permission, and practically lifted her work for its piece. Given this, she forced BirminghamLive to take it down.
However, her experience is characteristic of its broader shoddy journalistic standards. Specifically, BirminghamLive is courting readership with clickbait content – though this is of course nothing new. Essentially, DWP clickbait is the bread and butter of outlets like Birmingham Live. It peddles in fear-mongering stories, with headlines designed to stoke alarm to people claiming benefits.
One of the latest examples of this is its article titled:
DWP makes first change to Universal Credit under Labour government
In this instance, the headline misleadingly implies the article will reveal a change that the Labour government has instigated on Universal Credit. Of course, it’s precisely written so ambiguously to get people on social media to click and read.
Labour’s manifesto vaguely promised to “review” DWP Universal Credit, but gave no firm details on what this would mean in practice. So readers might naturally infer that BirminghamLive’s article could have something to do with this.
Instead though, the article details how the DWP is shifting the Universal Credit payment date due to the upcoming bank holiday. True: it’s happening with the new Labour government in power. False: there’s not actually any specific link to the two events. In other words, it’s using the old correlation conflated with causation fallacy to pump out a punchy-looking, but specious article.
Weaponising DWP Universal Credit claimant distress
What’s more, the combination of “DWP” “Universal Credit”, and “Labour government” is a search engine’s gold dust. Effectively, in combination, these buzzwords maximise the chances of search engines and news aggregators picking them up and pushing them out. This is called search engine optimisation (SEO) which all news outlets need to utilise to ensure a steady stream of traffic – readers – to their articles and websites.
In itself, there’s obviously nothing wrong with this. The Canary has optimised SEO in this article. However, again, the BirminghamLive headline is sneakily deceptive.
Naturally, it also weaponises claimants’ distress from the uncertainty of the new Labour government’s agenda on social security. In the lead up to the election, the party was evasive about its plans for Universal Credit.
Since the election, the new Starmer-led government has largely stayed silent over the consultation on Sunak’s PIP voucher vanity project. As the Mirror reported, Labour insiders have even indicated that the Labour government will mull over the responses. It has also yet to pledge that it will ditch the Tories’ Work Capability Assessment (WCA) plans, and other harmful benefit reforms.
All this equivocating has come amid new DWP Universal Credit boss Liz Kendall’s dogwhistle rhetoric over disabled and chronically ill people. As the Canary reported, she couched the number of economically inactive sick people in a speech about the government’s “Back to Work Plan”.
Of course, it seemed obvious what this implied and where it could invariably lead. That is, that Labour will push disabled and chronically ill people into work at detriment to their health and wellbeing. After a bitter, brutal fourteen years of Tories punching down on claimants with harsh sanctions and reforms, Kendall’s speech raised these glaring red flags.
It was therefore in the context of all this that BirminghamLive chose to publish the piece with its janky headline.
DWP and its corporate media mouthpieces
But then, this is from an outlet that routinely titles stories to demonise claimants too. The lapdog churnalists at BirminghamLive regularly spew out sensationalistic spin on people claiming DWP Universal Credit and other benefits.
For instance, the Canary previously highlighted its torrid tirade on so-called PIP benefit fraud. Spoiler: there barely were any, and it’s as far from a systemic problem as you can get.
The point is however, that these articles purposely feed into the vile rightwing narratives inciting moral panic and scapegoating poor and disabled people.
Of course, none of this is perhaps any wonder given the outlet’s parent company either. Media conglomerate Reach Plc owns BirminghamLive among its enormous portfolio of pseudo-local media sites. Reach also operates a number of national media sites including the Express, the Mirror, the Daily Star, and the Daily Record.
Who owns Reach? Largely, that would be a shareholder who’s who of major asset management companies and investment banks. Among these are big players in the financial sector such as Hargreaves Lansdown, BlackRock, and JP Morgan. Both Labour and the Tories have big backers from the City.
What’s more, the degrees of separation between Reach and the DWP doesn’t instill confidence either. Revelations and connections in recent years have unveiled the cosy relationship the client media outlet has built with the department.
In 2019, a leaked memo showed the DWP planning to employ Reach publications to publish advertorials for its plans. These are paid articles that news sites print in the style of editorials. It likely also churns out press releases planting these narratives from the DWP itself, although this isn’t possible to verify.
On top of this, people have previously pointed out that a now former senior director of Reach – Helen Stevenson – had worked for the DWP as a non-executive director.
So, far from publishing journalistic content that informs and uplifts the voices of marginalised communities, BirminghamLive is serving the interests of its capitalist shareholders. And as ever with shill corporate media outlets in bed with the rich and powerful, it’s doing so at poor and disabled people’s expense.
Featured image via the Canary
