When a headline (about Tony Blair and the ex-Guantánamo suicide bomber who got £1m compensation) issues day one from Mail Towers and is retracted on day two, in a Mail editorial no less, you look for a little fancy exculpatory footwork. Ah! Apparently David Blunkett made a soothing statement to the Commons in 2004, and “it was this assurance that prompted a headline which appeared briefly yesterday [ie Wednesday] on the independently edited MailOnline website (not in this newspaper, as Mr Blair falsely claimed) before a mistake was noticed and quickly rectified”.
Question time, then. Is MailOnline, at 15.6 million browsers a day, more or less important than the print title, selling around a tenth of that number? Who noticed this innocent “mistake” – as opposed to dastardly “false claim” – and how “quickly” was it rectified? How many people read it during those posted minutes or hours? How “independent” is online editing when a former PM roasts the mothership Mail? Is the editor-in-chief of all the Mails – who openly considers the online version his baby – not responsible for what it says?
In short, it’s an increasingly imponderable matter in these galloping digital days: who takes control? Who still loves you, baby?
■ It’s barely two weeks since loyalty and grit were conquering all. The Telegraph celebrated Leicester City’s “public show of faith” in Claudio Ranieri, its manager of the year (and probably millennium). The Mail endorsed Leicester’s “unwavering support” for its hero. The Guardian called on his players’ “fighting spirit” to respond. The press, in sum, put any thoughts of board or locker-room instability to bed.
Experts, even next week, are holding seminars on defining fake news. But the only unwavering thing in this parody-cum-tragedy is the frailty, going on berserk mendacity, of football’s sub-Churchillian, swiftly swallowed promises. Not so much fake as fatuous.
