MEDIA WATCH

A senior primary care trust manager recently implored Media Watch for tips on how the national press might be roused to report on the move to reconfigure PCTs with a£250m savings pledge in mind.

It is a difficult question.

Only The Guardian felt its readers should be told that the PCT chiefs surveyed in last week's HSJ have strong and deeply held fears that the rush to reconfigure PCTs would impact negatively on patient care and staff recruitment, retention and morale.

Media Watch is not one to make presumptions about the news judgement of other publications, surrounded as we are by tales of death and destruction on a horrendous scale in the US.

However, it couldn't help wondering what might have happened had 100 'top docs' slammed the government's reforms as 'rushed', 'incoherent', 'political' and 'vague', as the managers did.

It would not, perhaps, be too presumptuous to suspect that widespread coverage might have ensued had those opinions been uttered by 'concerned medics' - or indeed 'angel' nurses.

Some managers might be justified in thinking they get pushed around more easily than their clinical colleagues because they lack the sympathy of the media.

Perhaps one for new union Managers in Partnership to ponder?

Manager bashing is much more fun, it seems, as The Daily Telegraph demonstrated yet again last week as it blamed 'controlling bureaucracy' and inadequate management of finances for worsening NHS deficits. Of course the newspaper goes on to finger 'controlling bureaucracy' as the source of these problems.

Will we live to see the day when a newspaper calls for trusts to invest in more robust financial systems and skilled managers, rather than constantly being pressurised to 'cut red tape' to address 'inadequate management of finances'?