Liz Truss’ attacks on the media are a worrying sign of things to come

Our soon-to-be Prime Minister is playing a very dangerous game

Something rather worrying keeps happening during this Conservative leadership contest. Under questioning by journalists, Liz Truss has repeatedly switched, apropos of nothing, to bashing the media.

There was a particularly egregious example of this during last night’s GB News hustings.

Speaking to the host Alastair Stewart, Truss corrected a statement he had just made, before adding that: “I always thought you had high quality standards at GB news. It’s not the BBC you know, you actually get your facts right.”

Adam Bienkov @AdamBienkov

Liz Truss praises GB News, saying that: "it's not the BBC, you know, you actually get your facts right."

This was remarkable for several reasons. Whatever its faults, the BBC is one of the most-trusted news organisations in the world.

And even though it does sometimes make mistakes, its record for accuracy is leagues ahead of GB News, which has repeatedly been criticised for spreading falsehoods and disinformation during the relatively short time it has been on air.

This isn’t the first time Truss has tried this tactic. Speaking at another hustings with Talk TV’s Tom Newton Dunn earlier this month, the Foreign Secretary accused the media of “talking the country down” and suggested that they had actually been to blame for Boris Johnson’s downfall.

Adam Bienkov @AdamBienkov

Liz Truss asked who was to blame for Boris Johnson's downfall, is met with shouts of "the media" from the audience of Conservative Party members. Truss: "Who am I to disagree with this excellent audience?"

To Newton Dunn’s annoyance, she kept coming back to this line of attack, at one point (falsely) accusing the media of “misrepresenting” her plans to pay public sector workers less outside of London and the South East.

Her comments drew applause from the audience of Conservative Party members, but they were clearly not appreciated by the host.

“For the record that is the third time you've attacked the media [tonight] a lot of which supports your campaign,” he told her.

At the end of the session, Truss finally appeared to have realised that her comments weren’t going down well.

“I’m sorry that I was mean about the media,” she told Newton Dunn, in what she appeared to think was an off-microphone comment

Clearly unimpressed, he replied that her comments had been “cheap… and you know it.”

So does she know it, or is this what she really believes?

Here’s what I think is actually going on here.