I took the Scottish newspaper, The National, to task yesterday for running an editorial that attacked the wrong target and for suggesting that the SNP leader, Nicola Sturgeon, had never expressed hatred for Margaret Thatcher.
My posting elicited many ill-founded comments. Some appeared to suggest that I was a unionist who opposed Scottish independence (not true); that I am anti-SNP (I am not); and that I cannot tell the difference between someone hating another person’s political policies rather than the person themselves (not so).
In contrast to the commenters, The National has had the good grace to respond to my criticism with a praiseworthy admission of guilt by publishing a correction to its editorial, picking up on the very points I made.
In today’s (Thursday’s) print issue, it carries this handsome - and well signposted - correction:
“On Monday 16th November, we ran an editorial entitled ‘London papers twist the truth in efforts to smear Sturgeon’. In it, we referred to an article published on ‘the Daily Mail’s website’.
In fact, the article was published in the Mail on Sunday and the Mail Online website. We later incorrectly referred in our article to the Daily Mail as publishing the article.
We also said that Nicola Sturgeon had never expressed a ‘passionate hatred’ of Margaret Thatcher. She did, however, say that when she was growing up she ‘hated everything Thatcher stood for.’”
I note also that the paper appears, at least for the moment, to have taken down the original editorial from its website. That’s a pity, because online readers should know about its climbdown too. The editor should restore it along with the correction.
Now let me make the substantive issue clearer still for critics of my blog posting both here and on Twitter. I have bashed the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday many times down the years for their journalism. But this attack on the titles was both misguided and misjudged.
I was delighted by the launch of The National. Some of my best friends in Scotland (and, yes, I do have them) read the paper. But I think it overridingly important for a newspaper created for political reasons to ensure that its attacks are accurate.
Even though the MoS may have egged the pudding by saying Sturgeon had exhibited hatred for Thatcher the person rather Thatcher’s policies, it was not an unreasonable conjunction.
And here, for the record, is my opinion of Scotland’s first minister. I think Nicola Sturgeon is a fine, articulate, intelligent, passionate politician and I often find myself agreeing with her.
