The Times had a very late change of mind about its main front page headline for Monday’s issue.
In its original form, the headline over its story about the supposed defection of Baroness Warsi from the Brexit camp to the Remain side read: “Brexit camp in turmoil as leading Tory defects”.
Before publication, an image of that page was, as is usual, transmitted to other online media and appeared on Twitter, generating immediate hostility from the Vote Leave team.
Why? Because they claimed it was false to suggest that Tory peer Sayeeda Warsi was one of their supporters and therefore even more false to suggest the Brexit camp was “in turmoil” due to her alleged “defection.”
The Times was told it was wrong to portray the former minister as a high-profile Brexiteer; she had not been a public campaigner for Vote Leave.
So the newspaper changed its headline to the slightly more moderate “Brexit camp divided as senior Tory walks out.” It meant that the original headline never made it to the presses.
The straplines were altered too. “Warsi rails against ‘hate, xenophobia and lies’”, became “Gove and Farage accused of spreading hatred.” And the article was also rejigged to include some of Warsi’s political history.
I must admit that the subtlety of those amendments hardly seemed worth the effort. Essentially, the story stayed the same. Surely the Times didn’t really need to embarrass itself by making such changes?
After this blog item had been posted a Times spokesperson got in touch, at 1pm, to say: “The wrong version of the front page was sent out, but we had already changed the headline to be more impartial. It wasn’t done as a reaction to social media.”
