Media watch

The Suncalled it the 'Doctors' check-up' and the Daily Expressan 'MOT to weed out dodgy doctors'.
However, the most bizarre description of chief medical officer Professor Sir Liam Donaldson's proposals to toughen regulation of doctors came from Guardianhealth editor Sarah Boseley,
who wrote that it was 'immediately dubbed a &Quot;copper's nark&Quot;.'

Her declaration confused reporters who sat alongside her at the Richmond House press conference: they told Mediawatch that no-one at all could be heard using the phrase.

Meanwhile Ms Boseley's counterpart over at The Timesdeclared that the proposals, which include stripping the General Medical Council of its role as adjudicator on misconduct cases, amounted to 'a sad day for liberal values'.

Sir Liam's review was launched after the inquiry into the Shipman murders condemned existing measures to police doctors.

Although The Times' Nigel Hawkes praised some of the proposals and recognised that balancing public anger and 'preserving medicine as a profession' is a tough call, he commented that 'saying the profession can no longer be trusted to pick out its bad apples' is a step too far away from 'liberal-democratic' values.

Some journalists seem to feel they must stand shoulder to shoulder with other 'professions' whose self-regulatory system is under threat.

Other observers might conclude that evidence given by doctors in the Shipman trial and subsequent inquiry revealed an unquestioning attitude to their peers and underlined the urgent need to introduce an element of independent scrutiny.

Mary-Louise Harding