Roy Greenslade comments on Nick Davies and phone hacking errors at the Guardian
ROY Greenslade casts an eye over his Guardian colleagues less than faultless reporting on phone hacking:
Single errors by Davies and Hyde amid a host of truths do not invalidate The Guardian’s terrific overall work. I cannot believe, in all conscience, that editors and journalists across Britain do not agree.
Single errors that said the NoW deleted Milly Dowler’s voicemail messages when it did not. Single error being insignificant to the bigger picture of fine work was pretty much Fake Sheikh Mazher Mahmoud’s defence at the Leveson Inquiry. And what of Paul McMullan’s “privacy is for paedos“? He says exposing peadophiles – his terrific work – should not be invalidated by a few errors.
You can read out coverage of Nick Davies here. He has form.
It’s all bit rich from the Guardian, which gets to always be the good guy, especially, as Private Eye magazine says, “given their criticism of the tabloids’ splashing stories big and then making corrections tiny“.
Does any former NoW journalist oreditor agree with Greenslade?
Rupert Murdoch’s Australian reprinted a story from The Times with the headline:
Error led to News of the World’s closure
As Davies wrote, wrongly:
“The messages were deleted by journalists in the first few days after Milly’s disappearance in order to free up space for more messages. As a result, friends and relatives of Milly concluded wrongly that she might still be alive.”
The damage was done. The apology was small.
Posted: 24th, December 2011 | In: Reviews Comments (2) | TrackBack | Permalink
