Alexander's non-gaffe

Most of the press this morning has run with a 'gaffe' by Danny Alexander, in which he allowed himself to be photographed reading a document which said that the government expected 490,000 jobs to be lost. Fraser Nelson has just posted an excellent account of the flawed journalism behind these headlines, pointing out that the figure was widely published earlier in the year in a report which actually concluded 1.5 million jobs would be created as a consequence of the cuts. What's more, those figures are actually right next to each other in the Alexander 'gaffe' picture. Selective headline-chasing journalism at its best...