Need a quote to pad out your article on how single parents are set to receive more benefits? The TaxPayers' Alliance will help. Want someone to back up your opinion piece about how foreign people are taking all the jobs, thus increasing income tax somehow? Yep! The TPA will agree - even if your argument makes no sense!
There's nothing they love more than being in the papers, regardless of whether they actually know the first thing about the issue at hand. And there's nothing lazy journalists love more than insta-quote think tanks like the TPA to give a sheen of respectability to their hurried, poorly researched stories. It's a match made in Hades.
The Daily Mail (and some bloggers) have a cuddly special arrangement with 'those excellent people at the Taxpayers' Alliance', with a dedicated hotline straight to the TPA offices so condemnations of public spending can be accessed on demand.
Sadly, The Quail doesn't have this privilege, but now, thanks to our friends at The Other Taxpayers' Alliance, we can pretend to be real journalists just like the chaps at The Mail and The Express!
Spokesman Clifford Singer said:
Here's an unmissable tool for journalists tackling tax and public spending – our free-to-download media guidelines for reporting the TaxPayers' Alliance [pdf]The guidelines feature our essential top 5 reporting tips, and a handy flowchart to help you plan your story.
And if you're not a journalist, the guidelines make a great gift to send to those reporters who've perhaps been a little too credulous in their coverage of our favourite campaign group.
Squee! With the OTPA's new dossier and their brilliant multi-purpose quote generator, The Quail can finally break out of the nest and into the heady world of proper hackery, using the very same ligitimate methods employed by our favourite tabloids!
Expect a significant reduction in the quality of investigations and journalistic integrity from this point on.
Now that is brilliant... oops, I mean outrageous and disgraceful!
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