May I be permitted to settle the undignified squabble as to whether
it was the Evening Standard or The Independent ‘s Pandora column which
broke Labour’s “flying pigs” poster story (Dog, 11 February) on or
before 28 January. It was neither.
The Hampstead & Highgate
Express edition printed on the afternoon of 27 January had the story,
complete with pictures of the offending images, on page three. It hit
the streets the following morning, hours ahead of the first edition of
the Evening Standard .
While Guy Adams’ item in his Pandora
column appeared on the same morning as the Ham&High story, the
posters story was already on our website.
As Guy Adams said: “You
can’t do something ‘exclusively’ if someone else has already done it…
it amounts to an attempt to falsely take credit for one of the biggest
political stories of the past fortnight.”
Since neither the
Standard nor the Indy can take credit for a genuine exclusive, perhaps
all involved will be able to kiss and make up and put this unfortunate
and unnecessary spat behind them.
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