The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) clickbait outrage merchants at Reach PLC are at it again, using the fear of benefit claimants to make money. But what we discovered had gone down yesterday was truly astounding.
Last night the Canary noticed Birmingham Live was up to its old tricks, when they published a story with a headline that was a complete pack of lies.
What the FUCK is wrong with you?
We know you love DWP clickbait @birmingham_live as it bumps up your ad revenue at the expense of vulnerable people – but this is really low. The story is about SICK PAY yet you've framed it to scare disabled people. You are gross. https://t.co/kMXXSYDZSH
— Canary (@TheCanaryUK) March 3, 2025
The original headline read
DWP could stop 1.3 million people claiming sickness benefts [sic]
Setting aside the fact that the organisation has apparently fired so many people they don’t even proofread headlines anymore, this isn’t – as we pointed out in the tweet – what the story they’re reporting on is actually about. In fact the article’s own subheading proved it false, as they give us the actual news:
1.3 million workers across the UK will see an improvement in living standards due to long-awaited changes to statutory sick pay.
Once you get past the super-confusing first paragraph, which repeats the original lie then disproves it again for some reason, the reader will discover that it’s actually a story about how the government is proposing to make it easier to claim sick pay.
Birmingham Live and the DWP: it’s just lies, isn’t it?
If you piece together the jigsaw enough, you can work out how they got to “1.3 million will lose benefits” – it’s because the new proposals will mean people will have enough money to live so won’t have to claim DWP Universal Credit if they go on the sick.
So basically, Birmingham Live decided that people never having to claim benefits in the first place was enough basis to write yet another headline intended to make ad revenue off disabled people’s fear.
After seeing the Canary calling them out, I knew that their inaccurate headline could and should be reported to the press regulator they’re supposed to be held accountable by. So I requested that my followers do just that.
It took just half an hour of us calling them out for the headline to change. Now, it reads:
DWP plan set to give 1.3 million people big boost to their income
It gets worse
But that’s not even the weird part. After all, Birmingham Live is known for pulling shit like this all the time, and it turns out it had been – all bloody day.
When I clicked the “DWP” tag on the site, I noticed that particular story, weirdly, wasn’t at the top of the results – despite it only being published two hours before. And that’s when I realised just how many stories Birmingham Live had posted about benefits, pensions, etc.
In just 11 hours, the outlet had published TWENTY TWO stories tagged with DWP.
At some points throughout the day there were four stories published within the same amount of minutes. For example, between 15:52 and 16:18 there were seven. That’s not even half an hour.
Now I’ve worked for corporate media – and I know that in a world where traditional media is ruled by ad revenue, unfortunately quantity is often more important than quality. But this many stories about one topic absolutely takes the piss.
Using DWP fear for clicks
Of course, stories about the DWP are a guaranteed winner, especially so for Reach publications. However, when there’s this many it’s hard to see how. Any amount of page views is surely boiled down by how many articles that has to spread over.
And these “articles” are in no way any sort of breaking news. Many of them are the same thing rehashed.
Two new articles which were published whilst I was writing this (taking the tally up to 24) were on the face of it about different things: one stating households were urged to claim a £200 payment before time ran out and the other about a “special payment arriving in March”. However, they were in fact about the same hardship grant that Birmingham City Council are running – which does not involve the DWP.
But that’s exactly why these articles are so popular. People are struggling, and scared life is going to get even harder. Disabled people don’t know what cuts are coming and so are grasping out for any information they can get their hands on.
At the same time the government is testing the waters to see how these DWP cuts will go down with so called “working Britain”. So, what better way to do that by throwing out soundbites which can be broken down into as many chunks as the mainstream rags want to chop into “articles”. And Birmingham Live are gobbling it up for views.
The fact that 25 articles were written on one subject is pretty creepy (yep, they just snuck another in before midnight). But what’s creepier is that most of them were apparently written by one person.
Free James Rodger
James Rodger is the content editor of Birmingham Live. He is, despite my initial disbelief, a real person. My reason for this doubt is the sheer number of articles James puts out per shift. Yesterday alone he published ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY articles.
And honestly, they’re all absolutely fucking shit.
Not a single one of these “articles” are of any substance or consequence. They’re the same old clickbait about supermarkets and airlines bringing in “crucial” changes, banking bullshit about payments, holiday secrets, and of course we can’t forget warnings that it might snow in winter.
Judging by the volume of posts alone, these surely can’t have been written by a human. And if you actually click on them it’s clear to see that it’s absolute AI slop.
So not only is Birmingham Live farming your fear and rage for ad clicks, it’s also making it’s overworked teams (if there even are teams anymore) sit at desks for nine hours a day endlessly feeding stories into a robot and then repeatedly copy and pasting the drivel its spews out onto WordPress over and over again.
Is this really what student journalists envision doing when they graduate?
So what do Birmingham Live actually gain from this?
Well, the website is the 138th most visited out of every single one in the UK. The site also had around 20 million hits last month. Whilst that sounds amazing, you have to then divide that by how many articles are actually on the site. So the 20 million views boils down to about 715k views a day.
Whilst we’ve no way of knowing just how much shit Birmingham Live pumps out in a day, we do know that James Rodger churns out typically 120 turds in one shift. If we were to assume that was all Birmingham Live published, then he would get about 5.6k views per article. But it’s not so their article views are actually much much smaller.
So after all that DWP fearmongering, rage-baiting, and engagement farming, the soulless shells of journalists that are (hopefully not actually) shackled to Reach PLC desks in Birmingham don’t even get as many eyes on their “work” as the Canary does.
Deliberate DWP disinformation for clicks
At this point, we can no longer call what Birmingham Live is doing “misinformation”. They’re deliberately twisting the truth for their own gain. This is deliberate DWP disinformation, both preying on the fears of disabled people and feeding society’s need for an enemy to explain why they have no money.
I’ve long argued that the media plays into the government’s hands when it comes to turning the British public against disabled benefit claimants. But what Birmingham Live is doing is even more perverse.
They’re playing all sides, pretending to offer much-needed information to those who are living in fear whilst at the same time tearing them down and shoring up the scrounger narrative. Hoping that if they throw enough water on the fire, we won’t see that it’s really petrol.
Stop clicking the clickbait
Whilst it might seem like the media (and DWP) barrage against disabled people is winning, there is something you can do to stem it even a tiny bit.
Please, stop giving them your clicks.
Birmingham Live thrives on your anger, outrage and fear. Stop clicking and stop sharing. Call it out where you can, but include screenshots so others don’t have to click. This is the only way churnalism like this can be defeated.
Featured image via the Canary
