By Dominic Ponsford
The Publican newspaper has dropped its campaign against the Daily
Mail after claiming it has brought about a change of editorial policy
at the national daily.
The trade title urged its readers to stop buying the Daily Mail last
month out of protest at the Mail’s campaign “Say No to 24-Hour Pubs”.
It claimed that the Mail was “anti-pub”.
Now the Mail has changed the title of its campaign to “Say No to 24-Hour Drinking”.
Publican
deputy editor Daniel Pearce said: “I spoke to a senior executive at the
Daily Mail to ask them why they’ve got it in for pubs. He said, ‘we are
not against 24-hour pubs, we are against 24-hour drinking’.
“I said in that case why is your campaign called ‘Say No to 24-Hour Pubs’? He said, ‘you’ve made a very good point there and we will address it’.
“I
think we’ve achieved everything we could hope to achieve. We said from
the beginning that it was a bit of fun raising nationally this issue
that we thought the Daily Mail was treating the pub trade unfairly.”
A
Daily Mail source said: “We’ve never been anti-pubs in any shape or
form. We’ve often said the whole idea of the campaign is that this
should be discussed at the bar of some of the finest institutions this
country has – its pubs.”
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