If newspaper redundancies are a tragedy, why are public sector redundancies simply efficiency savings?

One of the unexpected heroes of the News Of The World shenanigans is radio genius Danny Baker. The greatest phrase-turner working in the British media today, he usually steers clear of politics (aside from occasional grumpiness about the manifold mysteries of Greenwich council). But this week’s revelations, and the media’s reaction to it, has got his dander up (apologies for post-watershed language):

Fuck off NOTW. If this had happened to other workforces you would've been out doing Murdoch & the Tory's bidding to blacken their names.

— Danny Baker (@prodnose) July 9, 2011

On a similar theme, undercover Labour hack Political Animal:

Odd. The rolling news channels never seem to be outside town halls when hundreds of council workers lose jobs through no fault of their own.

— Political Animal (@politic_animal) July 9, 2011

I will not rejoice at a single person losing their job, but I do not see why an arbitrary decision by News International to make people redundant  is worthy of any more chest beating than the thousands and thousands of public sector workers who have lost their jobs as a consequence of equally arbitrary financial decisions from the Government.

I’d suggest, as Danny does, that some of the News of the World staff, and people like them,  have directly contributed to cultivating a callous attitude to public sector workers that means that  their job losses are written off as statistics, as savings in pursuit of deficit reduction. I don’t necessarily disagree with the need for reductions in public spending, but the scenes from Wapping yesterday have been replayed in Town Halls across the country this year. Maybe the media will be a little more understanding after this, but I doubt it.