Coverage of MP’s earnings felt biased
DEAR Editor, I was disappointed that your coverage of the story on Midlands MPs’ private earnings featured a front page splash on the fact that Labour MP Jess Phillips had earned a private income of £162,838 since December 2019.
This places her in fourth place on your list, well behind Tory MPs Andrew Mitchell (£657,696), Sajid Javid (£358,017) and Owen Paterson (£209,237). Jess Phillips is one of three Labour MPs in your top eleven, alongside eight Tories.
I do not consider this to be balanced journalism and does reveal a political bias in the Post’s coverage. I look forward to reading a more balanced view in your future coverage of political matters in the Midlands.
Roger Westbury, Cofton Hackett,
Worcestershire
DEAR Editor, I feel compelled to write regarding the coverage in your January 12 edition of MP’s earnings additional to their MP/ministerial salaries.
Your coverage involved a front page picture of Jess Phillips with a headline referring to her £160,000 media earnings. Page 4 then also featured a further large half page photo of Phillips and a large headline “Phillips makes a mint as MPs’ earnings revealed”.
However, only in paragraph 4 of the piece is it explained that her additional earnings “pales in comparison with Conservative MPs locally. Top of the earners is Andrew Mitchell, MP for Sutton Coldfield, who earned £657,796 on top of his MP salary in three years”.
Mitchell’s additional earnings are more than four times those of Phillips. Sajid Javid’s are more than twice those of Phillips (despite the fact that as a minister for much of the period, his ability to obtain additional earnings would have been constrained, so that pro-rata, his additional earnings will have been much higher).
The objective facts of the story do not support an editorial decision to make both headlines about Phillips and to include two half page sized photographs of her in this context (compared to the much smaller pictures of Mitchell and Javid).
It is hard to escape a conclusion of bias in your coverage. This is before taking into account the more nuanced point (apparent from, though not made explicit in your story) that Mitchell’s earnings involve advising private businesses, whereas Phillips’ earnings are transparent media engagements.
Dr SJ Pilkington, Kings Heath, Birmingham