What is it about the NHS that stimulates such an appetite in the media for bad news and almost none for the good? For me, this issue came to a head with the reporting of the outcome of the great “deep clean” of hospitals. In any other walk of life, 94% of all hospitals having been deep cleaned by the target date would have been regarded as a supreme achievement—but not, it seems, when it comes to the NHS.

Inevitably, we in the media wanted to know the identities of the 6% that had failed. We wanted to name and shame them. So did ministers. Inevitably the attitude of the media to the NHS is strongly influenced by ministers’ behaviour. Unqualified condemnation of an individual hospital becomes a free-for-all for irresponsible and slapdash journalism. News reporting of …