Sensationalising Strikes

How UK news outlets want you to think about the resident doctor strikes

Written By Lizzie Pop

Ideology is everywhere: in advertisements, in the films we watch, and, most importantly, in the things we read. There are two definitions of ideology that are pertinent to this discussion. Firstly, ideology is the study of the way in which ideas are expressed in language - as P. Du Ponceau argues, it is the study of ‘the different shapes in which ideas combine themselves in order to fix perceptions in our minds, and transmit them to those of others’.¹ This linguistic definition ties closely with the term’s more well-known meaning in the Oxford English Dictionary as a systematic scheme of ideas, usually relating to politics, economics or society. From this, we understand that differing ideologies are everywhere, especially in the writings of the media intended to inform and influence readers. A particular viewpoint does not have to be painted boldly like in a propaganda poster, but can be found more subtly in the nuances of language.

The NHS resident doctor strikes have been a divisive and controversial topic for many: doctors, patients, readers, politicians, governments, and especially, news outlets. Depending on what particular news article we read, its outlet, the target audience, and its language and content, we get an entirely different picture of what is essentially the same story. That is, why resident doctors are striking, the aims of their strike, the doctors’ demands, how patients will be affected by the strike, and the socio-economic consequences of the strike. Each news outlet has their own ideology - their own viewpoint they want to put forward to readers -  which becomes strikingly apparent in the coverage of the strikes. There is a tendency for left-wing news outlets, such as The Guardian, to come across as more sympathetic to doctors and their striking plea, while right-wing outlets, such as The Telegraph, condemn the doctors and their actions as selfish as there is ostensibly no financial need to strike. Importantly, the linguistic analysis of how ideology penetrates language problematises the idea that neutrality within language can be maintained, as in the case of the BBC and its coverage of the strikes.

A key moment of the 17-22 December 2025 resident doctor strikes was Health Secretary Wes Streeting’s attempt to call off the strikes by offering resident doctors: an increase in specialty training posts from 1,000 to 4000 places; a reduction of competition for said training posts from 4:1 to 2:1; funding for Royal College exam fees and membership fees; and an increase in the less-than-full-time allowance by 50% to £1,500. December’s strike was subject to more scrutiny by the public and media due to its coincidence with the peak of the winter super-flu season, which saw a 50% increase in hospital visits compared to last year, with 95% of hospital beds occupied in hospitals around the country.² According to Streeting, the industrial action taken in December would place a much higher strain on the NHS, thereby leading to cancellations of planned outpatient appointments and surgeries, ultimately placing patients’ lives at risk.³ Thus, the news outlets’ response to the conflict between the BMA, resident doctors, and Wes Streeting provides a fertile ground for a linguistic analysis of the relationship between language, ideology, and power.

It is not through overtly influential statements like striking is amazing and doctors have to be doing them or strikes are awful and they shouldn’t be done that these articles convey their viewpoints, but through subtle manipulation of linguistic features that penetrate the viewpoint of their readers. Some examples include favouring the passive construction of a sentence as opposed to the active construction, with both having vastly different implications on how they may influence a reader. An active construction of a phrase would place doctors as the agent of the sentence: Resident doctors are striking due to poor working conditions, leading to thousands of cancelled outpatient appointments. This active construction highlights doctors as the instigators of the strikes and the direct cause of cancelled appointments, therefore directly blaming them for poor patient outcomes. Alternatively, consider the passive construction of this sentence: Poor working conditions led resident doctors to strike, leading to thousands of cancelled outpatient appointments. Here, resident doctors are placed as passive victims to poor working conditions, which renders the cancelled outpatient appointments as an unfortunate consequence to an underfunded and mismanaged NHS. We can see the impact of these seemingly innocuous changes in linguistic structures by looking at how different news outlets with differing ideologies employ techniques like these.

The Guardian, a historically left-leaning news outlet, typically focuses on human rights and political issues with a justice-centred approach, so it is not surprising that their article’s response to Wes Streeting’s offer and the BMA’s subsequent rejection of it reflects their empathetic political ideology. Among the many pieces covering the strikes published by The Guardian, it is interesting that they chose to include an opinion piece written by the chair of the BMA’s resident doctors committee, Dr Jack Fletcher.⁴ The article’s headline is ‘Why did doctors reject Wes Streeting’s offer? It still fails to treat us with respect’, whereby this interrogative framing of the headline immediately signals the exploratory nature of the article. This question implicitly presupposes that their rejection requires justification, which appeals to readers’ curiosity to the controversy and causes of the strikes. We also see a direct reference to Wes Streeting’s offer in the headline, and the idea that his offer does not ‘treat’ doctors well. ‘Treat’ ordinarily refers to the doctors’ treatment of patients, yet here it is applied to the striking doctors themselves. Subtly, the narrative is shifted to the government who mistreat doctors, as opposed to how doctors might be seen as mistreating patients by striking. There are also many instances of emotionally charged phrases, such as ‘medical jobs crisis’, ‘exodus of medics’, and working in the NHS is like ‘shuffling the deck chairs on a sinking ship’. This phrasing draws readers’ attention to the crisis-ridden state of being employed as a resident doctor within the NHS. The very fact the article is written by a practicing doctor invites a direct conversation between readers, who may be patients affected by the strikes, and the pleas of a striking doctor. Throughout the article, the repeated use of first-person pronouns (‘we’, ‘us’, ‘I’) signals that the article is produced as a representative voice of the profession, which lends the text a sense of intimacy between the reader and writing doctor, thereby allowing readers to empathise with the actions of resident doctors. 

Turning our attention to the ideological right of the media spectrum, The Telegraph is more disapproving of the resident doctors’ strike. Its media response to the rejection of Streeting’s offer is a financial analysis piece written by economic journalists.⁵ The article’s headline states: ‘What resident doctors don’t want you to know about their pay’. While the use of ‘you’ in The Guardian’s article functions as an open conversation between resident doctors and reader, The Telegraph’s piece turns the readers, the ‘you’, against resident doctors, as if they are concealing financial information from the public. Indeed, through the active construction of the sentence, the doctors are placed as the agents withholding information. Unlike headlines that might foreground systemic issues such as working conditions or healthcare policy, this construction centres the discourse on the apparently damaging intentions and behaviours of the doctors themselves, shifting focus away from the cause of the dispute. It is only in the article’s standfirst that we find out the article is a discussion about resident doctors’ rejection of Wes Streeting’s offer and the going-ahead of the strikes: ‘As medics prepare for walkouts over pay, little is said about their eyewateringly generous pensions’. Interestingly, The Telegraph chooses the more loaded term ‘walkouts’ instead of a more neutral term like strike or industrial action, which suggests abrupt abandonment of duty, implicitly framing the action as disruptive or irresponsible. This exaggerated language undermines sympathy for the resident doctors’ demands, simplifying it as a petty financial dispute with no mention of the working conditions of resident doctors. The main body of the article continues to frame the strikes through a discourse of disruption and financial privilege, consistently placing doctors as the active subjects of clauses. By contrast, the consequences of the strikes are often expressed through passive constructions, such as ‘1.5 million appointments being cancelled or rescheduled’. This structure removes institutional factors from responsibility and focuses on the outcome of disruption by the doctors rather than the systemic causes of the dispute. Moreover, verbs such as ‘demanded’, ‘rejected’, ‘indulging’ and ‘fighting’ depict the BMA as combative and uncompromising. Meanwhile, the government is often framed through verbs associated with moderation (‘offered’ and ‘insisting’), thereby suggesting that the doctors are the more aggressive party in the dispute.

The Guardian and The Telegraph use the same linguistic techniques in quite inverse ways, each to different effect. Yet, what can be said about neutral reporting? The BBC states it is ‘committed to achieving due impartiality in all its output’ and not taking sides in public debate and in controversial issues.⁶ Linguistically, I do not believe this is the case. The BBC’s coverage of the rejection of Wes Streeting’s offer is headlined: ‘BMA rejects fresh offer to end doctor strikes’, with the standfirst adding that ‘The BMA has rejected a fresh offer from the government to end the long-running dispute with resident doctors in England’.⁷ Immediately, there is no neutral ideology apparent. Terms like ‘fresh’ imply Streeting’s offer was so quickly rejected by doctors without thought, and the mention of a ‘long-running’ dispute implies it is the doctors who are dragging on an exhausted struggle through continual rejections. Moreover, in the very bold subtitle, ‘Significant disruption’, the BBC chooses to emphasise Wes Streeting’s mention of the disruption that strikes will cause to patients, as opposed to its counterbalanced quote from Dr Jack Fletcher, who defends the strikes by highlighting the doctors’ lack of pay restoration in line with inflation. This subtle journalistic technique may demonstrate that even alleged neutrality takes sides when reporting the strikes.

In conclusion, language is a form of social practice: it is simultaneously shaped by society’s views and shapes society. It involves a power imbalance between a writer and reader, one which involves influence particularly through the use of subtle linguistic techniques most people wouldn’t think twice about. In most cases of news reporting, linguistic analysis of articles reveals a heavy anti-strike sentiment, so it is important to distinguish concrete facts from facts skewed by muddling of language with ideological bias. It is in such a controversial topic as doctors striking for better pay and working conditions that these linguistic techniques become most apparent. As I am writing this, there is further industrial action being undertaken in April by resident doctors, so we can look forward to seeing how they are presented this time around…

Read the rest of the edition here.

References

1. P. Du Ponceau. Transactions of American Philosophical society. vol.3 75 (1830). Found in OED, 1.b. Available at: https://www.oed.com/dictionary/ideology_n?tab=meaning_and_use#907352

2. Hansard HC Deb vol 777 (10 December 2025). Available at: https://hansard.parliament.uk/commons/2025-12-10/debates/9527ACD9-2B72-49DC-B3F4-5D976797DD77/ResidentDoctorsIndustrialAction

3. Hansard HC Deb vol 777 (10 December 2025). Available at: https://hansard.parliament.uk/commons/2025-12-10/debates/9527ACD9-2B72-49DC-B3F4-5D976797DD77/ResidentDoctorsIndustrialAction

4. Fletcher, Jack. “Why Did Doctors Reject Wes Streeting’s Offer? It Still Fails to Treat Us with Respect.” The Guardian. December 15, 2025. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/dec/15/doctors-reject-wes-streetings-offer-strike-job-shortages-pay-cuts.

5. Brignal, Mattie and Joe Wright. “What resident doctors don’t want you to know about their pay”. The Telegraph. December 17, 2025. Available at: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/jobs/what-junior-doctors-dont-want-you-know-about-their-pay-salary-medics/#comment

6. BBC. “Section 4: Impartiality – introduction”. 2019. Available at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/editorialguidelines/guidelines/impartiality.

7. Triggle, Nick. “BMA rejects fresh offer to end doctor strikes”. BBC. 5 November 2025. Available at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cdrze1rzejlo