Engaged on other matters yesterday, I was unable to offer a necessary word or two of praise to The Independent's media commentator, Stephen Glover. In his column yesterday he took his own paper's editor to task for publishing a Foreign Office memorandum, 10 myths about the EU treaty, on its front page, without attribution.
Glover didn't think much of the defence by his editor, Simon Kelner, who argued that the paper had "printed a collection of facts, which our political editor independently verified". But, wrote Glover, "the Independent was not, of course, reproducing facts, but an interpretation of facts... Imagine how we would feel if the Daily Mail or the Daily Telegraph reproduced a Tory briefing note without attribution. Even if we agreed with the interpretation, we would feel that we had been wrongly kept in the dark."
Glover added: "A newspaper is perfectly within its rights in agreeing with the government of the day, but if it directly borrows its arguments it should say so. Even then it would be preferable, by way of establishing one's independent credentials, to amplify and refine those arguments oneself."
Spot on. And Glover gets a pat on the back from Guido Fawkes, who did so much to bring the deception - originally discovered by Neil O'Brien - to wider attention.
But, of course, we shouldn't forget that Kelner underlined Glover's independence by allowing the item to be published. So hats off to him for that, eh?
