Editorial.
When the chips are down you find out who your friends are. And nurses certainly found foes and unusual allies among the newspaper leader writers and columnists following the RCN's decision to proceed to ballot on removing its rule which prohibits industrial action. Many ethically-challenged journalists dished up a scandalous misrepresentation of the nurses' case, usually under banner headlines about 'fallen angels'. It's a measure of how worried the government is over the pay dispute that the Tory press went all out to dent the public image of nurses. It's a dangerous tack for newspapers, especially when their biased political opinions may not always find favour with readers. Many nurses are among the Daily Mail's readership for instance. After Lynda Lee Potter's outrageous drivel (see letters, page 41 ) one can only wonder how many nurses will continue to buy that newspaper. And there is also a clear gap between the views of informed media commentators and the opinion writers as our round-up of views shows (see features, page 18-21 ). But if nurses have fallen from their angelic status that's no bad thing. It's not an image nurses ever wanted, the irony is that the sections of the press which created and lived off that stereotype are now realising they may have got it wrong.