Unearthing journalists' faulty predictions and poor judgements is always enjoyable. To my delight, I once discovered that the Sun, in a fawning inter… - Peter Wilby

" "

Unearthing journalists' faulty predictions and poor judgements is always enjoyable. To my delight, I once discovered that the Sun, in a fawning interview in 1973, described Gary Glitter (later imprisoned for sexual offences against children) as "the rock’n’roll daddy who makes little girls ask to see more of his hairy chest". So before anybody else finds out, I will reveal that, during my editorship, the NS ran an article under the headline "Max Clifford is a nice chap shock". We reported that Clifford, who has just been convicted of sexually abusing four girls, was a man of "private modesty . . . committed to public service" whose "personal life has been a paragon of virtue". Since this was in 2000, we don't even have the excuse that it was the 1970s.

English
Collect this quote

About Peter Wilby

Peter John Wilby (born 7 November 1944) is a British journalist. He is a former editor of The Independent on Sunday (April 1995–October 1996) and the New Statesman (1998–2005). Wilby joined The Observer as a reporter in 1968. He was appointed as the newspaper's education correspondent around 1972, and subsequently worked in this field for the New Statesman (1975–77) and The Sunday Times (1977–1986). In August 2023, Wilby was convicted of making indecent images of children, some in the most serious category, and sentenced to 10 months imprisonment suspended for two years.

Also Known As

Alternative Names: Peter John Wilby
Works in ChatGPT, Claude, or Any AI

Add semantic quote search to your AI assistant via MCP. One command setup.

Related quotes. More quotes will automatically load as you scroll down, or you can use the load more buttons.

Additional quotes by Peter Wilby

[A]buse is deeply distressing and highly damaging to the victim. It is not made significantly more so because the perpetrator holds a powerful political position or wears black robes. Such claims excite journalists and attract more public attention; they do not help victims.

To wide indignation on Fleet Street, Sir Ian suggested newspapers' blanket and emotive coverage of such cases, compared with the cursory treatment of black children who go missing in the inner cities, betrayed institutional racism. Was he right? Perhaps it's not racism exactly but, if we are honest, the story is enhanced if the child is blonde, blue-eyed and nicely dressed, though no paper would dare to spell out the awful subtext: that a child who looks attractive to readers will also attract a potential abuser.

His vision of the Statesman was as a totally independent, and therefore fearless, mischief-maker. Sometimes this worked - the magazine's anti-Iraq war campaign was prescient and much copied; sometimes it did not - New Statesman covers could take on the wrong taboos, viz its Zionist conspiracy or its Blair as Stalin covers, or more recently the issue marking John Paul II's death, in which the late Pope's impact on Africa's Aids epidemic was compared with that of prostitutes and truck drivers.

Loading...