Littlejohn offers 'unqualified apology' for false 'elf'n'safety' story

tysonstorm · 09/06/10 - 21:00

http://tabloid-watch.blogspot.com/2010/06/littlejohn-offers-unqualified-apology.html

Fantastic, you couldn't make it up.

Or in Littlejohn's case he did. lol

Muggsy · 09/06/10 - 22:19

It won't stop posters on here endlessly quoting the original DM article to support their attacks on H&S and political correctness.:(

silentNate · 09/06/10 - 22:48

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v405/silentNate/littlejohnmiss.gif

[Deleted User] · 10/06/10 - 10:07

He didn't make it up though, did he? He was stupid enough to have written the story based on sources that he didn't bother to verify.

Raytops · 10/06/10 - 12:07

Of course all journalists get it wrong sometimes.
One thinks of that hottie(or humourless po-faced cow if you prefer} from the Guardian, Beatrix Campbell singing the praises of Shannon Matthew's mother Karen at the time of the abduction.
According to the fragrant Bea ,Matthews apparently was of good working class stock and a loving mother,. who was being unfairly pilloried by the media.
Things of course turned out rather differently.

gashead · 10/06/10 - 13:08

It's a f*cked up world when a tabloid journo is being mocked for admitting he got something wrong and apologising for it. Particularly when he was just repeating a story already in the public domain. The depths some people go to to bash the DM never fail to astound me.

silentNate · 10/06/10 - 13:14

Raytops wrote: »

Of course all journalists get it wrong sometimes.
One thinks of that hottie(or humourless po-faced cow if you prefer} from the Guardian, Beatrix Campbell singing the praises of Shannon Matthew's mother Karen at the time of the abduction.
According to the fragrant Bea ,Matthews apparently was of good working class stock and a loving mother,. who was being unfairly pilloried by the media.
Things of course turned out rather differently.

A lot of people in the media called the Karen Matthews thing wrongly. Littlejohn couldn't be bothered to get a researcher to phone someone from the school to check the school. That's beyond shoddy journalism

:mad:

gashead · 10/06/10 - 13:20

silentNate wrote: »

A lot of people in the media called the Karen Matthews thing wrongly. Littlejohn couldn't be bothered to get a researcher to phone someone from the school to check the school. That's beyond shoddy journalism :mad:

Quite possibly, but - as I'm sure you know - no different to probably 90% of tabloid* journalism in any form. He's since found it he got it wrong and has apologised, unlike the other 99.9% out of that original 90%. So what's the problem? Are we now seeing apologising as a sign of pathetic weakness to be ridiculed or something?

* ETA - and not just tabloid, if Raytops Guardian story is correct, which you'd expect to perhaps show a bit more professionalism, which makes bashing the DM even more bizzare.

Sven945 · 10/06/10 - 14:16

Raytops wrote: »

According to the fragrant Bea ,Matthews apparently was of good working class stock and a loving mother,. who was being unfairly pilloried by the media.
Things of course turned out rather differently.

Oh, of course. But could the writer have known what actually happened at that point? Could she have made a quick, obvious, phone call to have checked a simple fact?

estrella★ · 10/06/10 - 14:20

gashead wrote: »

It's a f*cked up world when a tabloid journo is being mocked for admitting he got something wrong and apologising for it. Particularly when he was just repeating a story already in the public domain. The depths some people go to to bash the DM never fail to astound me.

And it's a f*cked up world when a tabloid journo bases an entire opinion column on a story that turns out to be a complete fabrication, particularly when he could have simply picked up the phone and confirmed whether it was true or not.

The depths some people go to to defend shoddy muck-raking tabloid journalism in the DM never fails to astound me either.

Sven945 · 10/06/10 - 14:23

If this was a one off then it'd be just ignored, but it's the fact that he fills his column twice a week with such ill informed and exaggerated nonsense.

gashead · 10/06/10 - 14:33

estrella★ wrote: »

And it's a f*cked up world when a tabloid journo bases an entire opinion column on a story that turns out to be a complete fabrication, particularly when he could have simply picked up the phone and confirmed whether it was true or not.

The depths some people go to to defend shoddy muck-raking tabloid journalism in the DM never fails to astound me either.

LOL

(but see post 8 and then comment)

Raytops · 10/06/10 - 15:13

I don't like Littlejohn at all to be honest.
I much prefer Jan Moir.

silentNate · 10/06/10 - 15:27

Sven945 wrote: »

Oh, of course. But could the writer have known what actually happened at that point? Could she have made a quick, obvious, phone call to have checked a simple fact?

gashead wrote: »

LOL (but see post 8 and then comment)

See post 9, as above.

wikipedia wrote:

On a June 2001 edition of Nicky Campbell's show on BBC Radio Five Live, a discussion took place between Littlejohn and Will Self. Both were on the show to promote their novels (Littlejohn's To Hell in a Handcart and Self's How the Dead Live). Campbell cited David Aaronovitch's description of Littlejohn's novel as a "400-page recruiting pamphlet for the BNP". Littlejohn responded (referring to Aaronovitch): "What else do you expect from an overgrown student union leader who used to be a member of the Communist Party?". He later boasted that he would include the quote on the cover of the book when it was reprinted. However, due to poor sales of the original publication, this reprinting has not taken place.

lol

PhilH36 · 10/06/10 - 20:03

estrella★ wrote: »

And it's a f*cked up world when a tabloid journo bases an entire opinion column on a story that turns out to be a complete fabrication, particularly when he could have simply picked up the phone and confirmed whether it was true or not.

You mean as in The S*n printing the Diana hoax without bothering to investigate fully whether the story was true,and then whining that "our readers should not have been exposed to this hoax" when they found they'd been conned. Boils down to the same thing,they couldn't be bothered to investigate the story fully before printing it.

The Snakes · 11/06/10 - 01:41

The spirit of the story was entirely correct, even if the facts were not.

Muggsy · 11/06/10 - 07:22

The Snakes wrote: »

The spirit of the story was entirely correct, even if the facts were not.

Only to the deluded.

roddydogs · 11/06/10 - 08:17

So why is this apology not printed in the Mail?.........PS Do even Mail readers (me included) Take Littlejohn seriously? we could all write his column ourselves, we know what its going to say.

tysonstorm · 11/06/10 - 08:39

So is Dick Littlejohn still an immigrant living in the Sunshine State in the good ol US of A?

Sven945 · 11/06/10 - 11:34

The Snakes wrote: »

The spirit of the story was entirely correct, even if the facts were not.

As a work of fiction it's a masterpiece up there with the likes of Dan Brown and Jeffrey Archer.

Hey there!

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Littlejohn offers 'unqualified apology' for false 'elf'n'safety' story

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