We would like to apologise to the Evening Standard for past stories that may have given the impression that we regard them as a bunch of fact-free churnalists who’d print anything to get Boris elected. Angry references to the ‘Evening Boris’ and the ‘Double Standard’ may have lead to the inadvertent impression being given that we doubted their commitment to fair and balanced coverage of the London Mayoralty.
We now realise in the light of Pippa Crerar lifting our story coming to the same conclusion as Boris Watch on the mendacity of Boris Johnson’s ‘cyclist squishing bendies’ spiel from last year that they are in fact fearless guardians of the truth, dedicated to unearthing the facts and reporting them to their open-jawed public.
We apologise for any misunderstanding this may have caused. Gilligan is an idiot.
[Oh, and the coverage of Boris's rethink on the extremely ugly Three Sisters scheme at Waterloo isn't exactly the Evening Boris of old, either.]
5 responses so far ↓
I think it’s a mistake to lump in all writers and reporters on the Standard together, equally I think the attack on Crerar here is unfair. I think if you go back and read their coverage both Crerar and Paul Waugh have provided fairly balanced coverage of the mayoral election and its aftermath. Some of the strongest stories demonstrating the problems associated with the Boris Johnson mayoralty have been broken by these journalists. Crerar has also consistently and in a balanced way raised question marks about Johnson’s administration; see this for example: http://crerar.standard.co.uk/2008/09/bad-timing-bori.html
It’s true that the Wadley editorial line overwhelms the reports of these journalists – aided and abetted by her pet attack dog Andrew Gilligan – but this does not detract from the fact that the coverage is not uniform.
In fact I’d go further and say that some of the coverage by Crerar and Waugh has actually been more informed and interesting than a lot of stuff that appears on BBC and ITV London.
In fact, having now seen Andrew Gilligan’s attack on this august website in today’s Standard, I think this reinforces my earlier point about distinguishing between different reporters.
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23578147-details/Ignore+the+bleatings+of+the+bendy+bus+brigade/article.do
Quoting a comment, out of context, in order to discredit. Again, nice one Andrew.
Hey, there’s no such thing as bad publicity. Gilligoon attacking us is exactly to plan – I wrote a long comment on his typically idiotic Westfield article last week largely phrased to wind him up, as well as comments around the place as an experiment in how much power someone with no power actually has. Muahahaha. Fish, hook, reel. I’ll have some T-shirts printed up.
Pippa Crerar I’m actually quite a fan of – she did have a long period during the early administration turmoil where lots of stories were coming out and her blog was silent, though, which was a shame and of course she’s a way better journalist than Gilligan, but the Goonster gets the front page and the awards. Sums it up, as you said. From memory, Paul Waugh did a few of the boilerplate early bendy/RM articles where a bit more research might have spiked the whole idiocy early on (I ask myself what would have happened if the ‘no cyclists killed by bendies’ thing had come out back end of 2007), so I’m less sure there.
Actually, and risking an extreme degree of egotistical self-referential irony, my post was mainly a pisstake of ourselves, as a reminder to us that regarding the Standard or indeed Boris’s City Hall as a monolithic block of crap is wrong – they’re both complex organisms that can do good as well as bad and should be judged on the merits. The original Private Eye form it’s lifted from is, of course, a dig at press hypocrisy, which in this case means Boris Watch.
BBC and ITV London are slightly less grown up than Newsround. I stopped watching TV news quite a long time ago, except occasionally dipping into Channel 4 News.
some examples of Paul Waugh’s coverage:
Boris shares blunder:
http://waugh.standard.co.uk/2008/04/breaking-news-.html
On policy exchange: http://waugh.standard.co.uk/2008/08/boris-chaos-is.html
On Johnson’s lack of rigour on figures:
http://waugh.standard.co.uk/2008/04/the-sting.html
On how Johnson’s routemaster figures stack up:
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard-mayor/article-23478688-details/My+bus+plans+will+cost+%C2%A3100m,+admits+Boris+in+Labour+sting/article.do
His highly effective and relentless pursuit of the Simon Milton appointment:
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard-mayor/article-23485254-details/Mayor’s+adviser+will+work+for+free+after+legal+row+over+appointment/article.do
to name but a few….