Readers of today's Sunday Times may have been somewhat puzzled as to why the paper's business section devoted half a page to the supposed troubles of the Guardian Media Group. The clue may well lie in the simplistic eye-for-an-eye, tooth-for-a-tooth policy of its editor, John Witherow. When I once wrote a piece critical of his paper, Witherow warned The Guardian: "I will always retaliate, and I have many more readers than you do, so I can cause you much more pain."
It was impossible not to note that last Monday's column by Peter Wilby in The Guardian newspaper media section contained a moderately critical piece about the Sunday Times under Witherow 's editorship, calling it "both unloveable and unexciting."
So it was possible to set your watch by the tit-for-tat response. A hapless Sunday Times reporter by the name of Dominic Rushe was duly deputed the task of penning a hatchet job and duly obliged. Such, it seems, are the high-minded ways of modern Fleet Street.
