Our critique of
The Sun
Analysis #915 · September 16, 2026 · 2 min read
Politics
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Ladbrokes' Owner Beat Profit Forecasts, Then Cut 400 Jobs. The Sun Filed It Under 'Save Our Bets.'
Sun label: 'SAVE OUR BETS'15,900 figure: industry-funded EY forecastEntain half-year profit: £479m (Guardian)Tax idea linked to scrapping two-child capOwner: News Corp (Murdoch family)
👁Decoded
The Sun has a campaign with a catchy name: Save Our Bets. It wants ministers to keep their hands off betting taxes. Fine. Newspapers are allowed to campaign. But on Wednesday that campaign's name sat as the label on top of a news story, and the story came out wearing the same team shirt. * The news: Entain, the company behind Ladbrokes and Coral, wants to cut 400 customer care jobs. That's one in every five people on that team. * The Sun's version then passes the microphone around. Entain's boss gets a long run. The betting industry's lobby group gets a long, angry quote at the end. A Conservative shadow minister gets a line about "Labour's morality police." Nobody from the 400 gets a word. No union. No gambling charity. * What about the 15,900 lost jobs in the headline? Credit where it's due: The Sun says where that number comes from. It's a forecast by the accounting firm EY, paid for by the Betting and Gaming Council. That's the industry's own lobby group. So the scariest number in the story is a forecast the industry paid for, about a tax the industry opposes. * Now the parts you'd only find somewhere else. The Guardian reported that just weeks ago Entain posted £479m in underlying operating profit for the first half of the year. That was a touch lower than last year, but better than investors expected. The Sun's story doesn't mention it. * The Guardian also explained what's riding on the tax fight. Prime Minister Andy Burnham has backed an idea from former PM Gordon Brown: tax gambling firms more, and use the money to scrap the two-child benefit cap. That cap is the rule that stops families getting support for a third child. So this is money for poor kids. The Sun's story doesn't mention that either. * Hundreds of millions in profit, 400 jobs cut, and the villain the story leans on is tax. That includes a new tax nobody has announced yet: the chancellor is only reported to be looking at it. * We've seen this movie. The Sun also runs a "Stop The Holiday Tax" campaign, and on September 10 it told readers "Brits face paying £100s more for UK holidays" over a tourist tax that local mayors can choose whether to use. * In our view, a campaign belongs on the opinion page. Put it on the news page and readers get half a story. It's the half the industry would have picked.
“A campaign belongs on the opinion page. Put it on the news page and readers get half a story.”
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