Paul Dacre has issued a stinging retort to his Daily Mail successor Geordie Greig’s first big interview since taking over as the title’s editor last year.
Speaking to the Financial Times earlier this month, Greig said 256 advertisers had returned to the paper in his first year as editor.
In a letter to the FT, Dacre said the former Mail on Sunday editor was “as economic with the actualité as your paper is in reporting matters Brexit”.
Dacre stepped down as editor of the Daily Mail in August last year, aged 70, to take the role of editor-in-chief and chairman at Mail publisher Associated Newspapers.
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Under his editorship the Mail was fervently pro-Brexit and had been boycotted by some companies over its stance on immigration. But Dacre was also praised for his ability to resonate with the paper’s readers.
He wrote of Greig’s claim that advertisers had returned to the Mail that “in fact, far more than that number left during the same period”.
Dacre claimed the way the FT portrayed the Mail in Henry Mance’s Lunch with the FT interview with Greig was a “ludicrous caricature”.
Writing of the awards won by the paper under his editorship, Dacre also took a shot at Greig directly.
He wrote: “As for Mr Greig, I congratulate him for making a solid start as editor and continuing so many of those campaigns but I’m sure he’ll forgive me for suggesting that he (or his PR) defers his next lunch with the FT until he has notched up a small fraction of those journalists’ achievements.”
Picture: Murray Sanders/Associated Newspapers
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