Sunday, May 06, 2007

The Evening Standard, Tom Bower & Conrad Black

Now don't get me wrong, I have no reason to defend Conrad Black, and my dealings with Tom Bower have always been friendly and straight-forward. He's written a number of top selling biographies, many of which have then involved him in legal action with his subjects. He's not averse to threatneing legal action himself, so in some ways it isn't very remarkable that the Fleet Street media commentators have failed to discuss the style of reporting by Tom Bower on the Conrad Black trial in Chicago.

Bower appears convinced that the former owner of the Telegraph newspapers will end up in jail and never hesitates to gloat about it.

How much more piquant would his readers in the London Evening Standard find the reports if they were also told that Bower wrote an excoriating biography of Black that caused him to issue a writ against Bower.

How much more exciting would his reports be if the readers were told Bower himself sent a lawyer's letter to the Mail on Sunday in response to an hilarious review of the book by Craig Brown, and that as a result its sister newspaper, the Daily Mail, decided not to publish its own review of the book by Dominic Lawson, one of the few friends of Black who have not deserted him.

The Evening Standard, which publishes Bower's pieces, has suffered a 24% fall in readership in the last twelve months. Who is its editor? Step forward Ms Veronica Wadley... also known as Mrs Tom Bower.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I thought The Evening Standard was being edited by Paris Hilton.
It's full of fashion and celebrity scum. One of the front page headlines, last week, was "Ethical Bag made in China".