The RMT has long been one of the favoured groups to shackle in the tabloid stocks and throw rotten vegetables at.

The London Evening Standard, for example, has for years loved to run "commuter misery because of the hard left"-style reports, even if there is no basis in fact.

The RMT in some senses filled the role the National Union of Mineworkers played for the press in the 1980s. For Arthur Scargill, read Bob Crow.

Whenever Crow appeared in the press, it was almost always accompanied by a photograph of him that has caught him looking angry and aggressive - a deliberate decision by picture editors.

And he was never quoted as speaking lucidly about the issues his members faced at work, nor about Tube safety - something you would expect newspapers to care about in a land of common sense.

Instead, as a small but representative selection of headlines about the RMT show, whenever the union appears in the press it is in a wholly negative and personalised light. The Daily Mail and the Sun are - unsurprisingly - leaders in this.

RMT press officer Geoff Martin is faced with the arduous task of putting reporters right, rebuffing stories and trying, in the face of endless hostile noise, to make sure the facts about issues such as Tube safety and workers' conditions are aired publicly.

"I spend a lot of time speaking to reporters who have an editorial policy that is clearly against the RMT," he says.

"95 per cent of all papers I would say are hostile, but I have to try and get our case across."

Crow would often be dubbed a "yobbish union boss who earns £129,000 a year running the militant rail union."

For example, Crow was accused in one Mail headline of being threatened with being thrown out of a football match at the non-league game which his union had sponsored due to a "foul-mouthed rant."

Martin says this is par for the course. Crow was "a working-class bloke who went to a football match," smiles Martin at the ridiculousness of it all.

"There were no complaints from anyone there at the game or from the football club. He went into the boardroom afterwards. It was just a crazy story, but that is the environment we live in. We know what we are up against and we try to fight against it.

"If we were not successful they would not bother, and that is the fact of it. If we did not do good work for our members they would not come after us and it would not be such an issue for them. They do not like an assertive and successful working-class trade union. It goes against what they want, which is subservience and knee-bending. We are a challenge and a threat to them."

The Sun also loved to get its claws into Crow - and not always accurately, as an apology had to be printed after some of its allegations about his pay and conditions were shown to be simply lies.

One example was a 2010 article headlined "Comrade Crow's 12% pay increase: As millions suffer wage freezes, RMT's militant leader pockets £10,000."

It went on to add: "Since his election in 2002, the former communist has been known for his bullying style and lack of concern for the travelling public."

Yet if you read releases by the RMT, concern for the travelling public is essentially at the heart of all its actions.

Yes, it does what any trade union should do - protect the rights of its members - but nobody has spoken out so much over issues like Tube safety and investment.

RMT has acted as a valuable and well-informed watchdog over our transport network - something desperately needed in an age where private companies carve up our systems of getting from A to B in an unending quest for profit, often at the expense of safety and services.

This is a fact no mainstream paper ever comments on. Never mind - let us not let the facts get in the way of attacking the media's favourite self-created bogeyman, editors seem to say.

It gets worse. The Sun had to issue the following apology: "An article on 15 September reported RMT general secretary Bob Crow had a union-subsidised home and luxury car. In fact, Mr Crow's home has never been subsidised by the union and he does not own a car, union or otherwise, and champions public transport. We are happy to set the record straight and apologise to Mr Crow."

Yet this did not calm down the attacks. The Sun was still at it. Under a title saying: "Loathed: Rail union leader Bob Crow has been called the 'most hated man in London'" the Sun quoted its News International stablemate the Sunday Times which said: "Militant union boss Bob Crow lives in a housing association home aimed at low-income families, despite enjoying a six-figure salary package."

Again, a story attacking the individual, not a calm critique of his union's policies.

It was easier for the papers to accuse Crow of making commuters' lives a misery when his members held the occasional one-day strike - voted for by the membership and legal even under our country's draconian trade union laws - rather than look at the real issues, such as the lack of public investment in our transport infrastructure over the years, and the failure of the private and public finance partnerships that have been used to attempt to upgrade the creaking Tube system.

Yet still it went on. The Sun took the fight right to Crow's front door in 2009. Not content with attacking him personally in print, it stage-managed a photo opportunity by parking a Sun logo-ed bus in front of his home.

Under a headline "Hated union boss Bob Crow gets a taste of his own medicine from The Sun - after his two-day Tube strike brought misery to millions of Brits this week," the paper claimed it had given "Union boss a taste of his own medicine."

"Moaning Crow threw a hissy fit and called cops when we made him five minutes late for work. He flew into a rage after we parked our Sun bus outside his house in Woodford, east London, and walked in front of him as he tried to get to the Underground."

"They resorted to petty behaviour such as treading on Bob's toes to try and provoke him and get him to lash out," recalls Martin.

But he was "incredibly calm and simply did not respond." They even followed him on holiday, Martin recalls.

This harassment in the attempt to create a negative news story was not a one-off.

"Quite soon after I had started working here I came out of the office and there was a strike on the Victoria Line," says Martin. "There was a reporter and a photographer hassling people who came out."

This was relentlessly hostile and provocative behaviour by journalists. Their hatred knows no bounds, and again does their readers a disservice by singularly failing to mention at all what the RMT is campaigning for.

In another "exclusive," the Sun reported that Crow - wait for it - had a go at karaoke, a disgraceful act, apparently, as at the same time rail unions were "plotting chaos."

The report stated that at a Christmas party - or bash, as they put it - Crow had the gall to stand up and sing a song.

"The hard-line RMT general secretary was cheered as he crooned Fly Me To The Moon at a union party," the Sun wrote.

Can you imagine? A union leader singing a song at a party? Disgraceful. It would be funny if it wasn't so damaging.

As Martin recalls: "They do like to drag up really arcane stories. Sometimes you simply could not make it up. They even called me about it for a comment. The fact was he went to a union Christmas party social function and then sang a song. He is the general secretary and some one said give us a song, Bob. That was it. On the back of that they ran a story."

Photographs were also regularly used to attack Crow. One image speaks volumes about news desk attitudes as to what is and isn't a story when it comes to the RMT.

The union leader was once photographed by one of the many paps who like to trail him around carrying an umbrella that said "Cuba" on it.

"It was as if Bob was plotting in the hills outside Havana, planning to march on London and impose martial law," says Martin.

Martin points out that part of the 7/7 inquiry verdict "praised the Tube staff and praised RMT members for their professionalism and courage.

"Yet it is those staff whose jobs are under threat or have already been lost. The press seemed to want to ignore our role on that day and then they attack us when we express our worries over Tube safety. It means the myth of the RMT being a hostile force to the users of public transport gets trumpeted constantly."

So why does this sorry state of affairs exist? It would be enough to make the most rational and accepting person feel there is some kind of damaging conspiracy against a legitimate trade union.

Martin believes it has to be "politically motivated. They do not want us to become a beacon for other working-class unions and to show what can be done," he says.

"Our successes for our members say get organised and get in a trade union and you can benefit from it - they do not like this message."

Yet despite the constant rebuttals and the cheap snipes at Crow, Martin believes they have always put up a good fight to get their message across.

"Our job is to look after our members, and to do all we can to use all media channels to get our arguments across," he says.

"The success of this can be measured by the fact, despite the negative press, we are the fastest-growing trade union in the country."

Martin also says that at last the fact the Tube service is seen as being poor after years of underinvestment is no longer being blamed on RMT members in the public's mind.

"The idea that bad public transport is somehow the RMT's fault is now beginning to wear thin," he says.

"Boris Johnson for a long time avoided blame, but as the chairman of Transport for London, he shouldn't be able to avoid this.

"We have tried to ensure Johnson is held accountable. We had this situation where the Jubilee Line would pack up and he would say he was incandescent with rage that it had happened, avoiding the uncomfortable fact that he is in charge of the network."

This article is a slightly edited extract from a chapter of Public Service On The Brink edited by Jenny Manson (Imprint Academic 2012)