BUREAU CHIEF IN SHOOTING
Jim Campbell, northern bureau chief of Ireland’s Sunday World, was seriously injured after being shot four times in an attack by terrorists. He passed a note to his editor, Colin McClelland, who visited him in hospital in Belfast, stating: “Killers afraid of our policies –
that’s why they shot me. They’ll not shut me up.”
PRESS COUNCIL SLAMS STANDARD
The Press Council upheld a complaint against the Evening Standard for smearing the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament in a front-page splash headlined: “CND ‘holding hands with the IRA'”. The story criticised CND for mounting a demonstration against cruise missiles three days after the IRA bomb attack on Harrods. The Standard accused CND of tying up police resources that should have been used to combat the threat to London from the IRA. The Press Council ruled the Standard’s report of the demonstration was “irresponsible in the extreme”.
EXPRESS IN ROW OVER SCARGILL ‘SPEECH’
The Daily Express was in crisis after print union Sogat demanded the National Union of Miners be given a right of reply to a front-page article written in the form of a mock speech by NUM leader Arthur Scargill. Editor Sir Larry Lamb refused the demand, but Express group chairman Lord Matthews agreed when confronted by Sogat’s Bill Keys, who threatened to stop the paper if the reply was not published. Lamb offered his resignation and production of the paper was halted after journalists “blacked” the miners’ reply. The journalists wanted Keys to withdraw his threat not to produce the paper if the miners’ reply was not published, describing it as blackmail. Keys dismissed the journalists as “paper tigers”.
PRINTERS FORCE SUN TO PULL PIC
The Sun was also drawn into a row about its coverage of the miners’ strike. Sun printers refused to handle a pic-ture of Arthur Scargill giv-ing a straight-arm salute to supporters, referred to in the copy as a “Hitlerstyle salute”. The paper appeared without the picture or the planned headline “Mine Führer”.
NEWS OF THE WORLD DROPS BROADSHEET
The News of the World switched from broadsheet to tabloid on 20 May 1984, beating The Independent by nearly 20 years. The editor masterminding the switch was Nick Lloyd, who had been recruited from the Sunday Mirror following the departure of Derek Jameson. Lloyd told Press Gazette: “It is the end of a great era, but it is also the start of a new and exciting one.” Bruce Matthews, managing director of News International,said of the new paper: “It is a really big package – 48 pages in the paper plus Sunday colour magazine, all for 25p – real tabloid value compared with the tiddlers.” News of the World pagination now regularly runs to more than 90 pages –
double what it was in 1984 – plus a magazine and a soccer supplement.
ACTOR WINS ‘SUBSTANTIAL’ DAMAGES
The Sun agreed to pay film star Jack Nicholson “substantial” damages over claims that he took drugs and had been arrested for drug offences in the US.
MARTIN BECOMES GROUP EDITOR
Geoff Martin, now editor of the Hampstead & Highgate Expressseries, wasappointededitor of theSlough,Eton and Windsor Observer Group. Martin has also edited theBelfast Newsletter.
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