Barely had this nascent blog stopped fiddling with its umbilical before a “regular” reader was discovered asking why there was no comment on The Herald’s story blaming the SNP budget for Glasgow City Council’s decision to make 425 people redundant.
“How can any national paper get away with saying that the Labour Council decision to make their announcement of axing jobs post-budget was ‘to help meet the national target of freezing council tax’? This is party-political propaganda at its worst.”
Maybe so. Or could it just possibly be a favourable spin due to longstanding and continuing links between the council and former Evening Times senior management who have now migrated to the mother ship of the group? As one established news reporter once privately remarked: “People wouldn’t believe it if you told them. It was as if an awkward silence over the dinner table was more important than real news on what the council was doing.”
But accusations of political bias are likely to be very low on the agenda this week after a supreme gaffe by the staff of the Herald website.
Apparently oblivious to such technical terms as sub judice and contempt of court, the Saturday edition managed to give prominence to two news stories involving upcoming court cases without having the foresight to restrict or moderate comments.
One story published on Friday night involved a police constable charged with assault while the other made reference to a certain former politician who has recently been charged with perjury (unsurprisingly the most popular story of the weekend).
An early call on Saturday morning saw the comments on both removed (without the usual explanation of being “due to abuse”) but not before more than 100 comments had been published, many of which would certainly be seen to be potentially prejudicial to the outcome of the trials.
As our correspondent, who had the remarkable foresight to copy the pages remarked: “They think they got away with it – but they haven’t.”
Might as well just vacuum under the carpets next time too.
Note: Comments on this post have been suspended for reasons that should be clear to (almost) everyone. Feel free to send an email to themeeja@gmail.com.
