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SCOOP! TWO

Or

Sorry Seems To Be The Hardest Word

Martin J Walker MA

 

And sorry seems to be the hardest word

It's sad, so sad,

It's a sad, sad situation

And it's getting more and more absurd

 

(Written by Elton John and Bernie Taupin, recorded by Elton John, released in 1976,)

.

 

 

 

INTRODUCTION

 

On December 8 2006, the Guardian printed a front page article which was presented as an expose.  The article claimed to quote from previously un-revealed documents, that Sir Richard Doll the world’s greatest dead epidemiologist, had been contracted to Monsanto as an ‘independent’ consultant at a cost of $1,500 a day for a period of around 20 years. An item covering this same story was repeated on the Radio 4 Today programme. Both the Guardian article and the Radio 4 item used the news flash to introduce other unquestioned information about Doll’s integrity.

 

While this information was presented everywhere over the following week as new information. I and a few other people knew that not only was the information three years old and had already been published, but it had been  first presented by me after years of research.

 

After enquiries, I found out who had sold the story to the Guardian and who had presented the item to Radio Four on the basis of an article apparently written by Rory O’Neill in Hazard’s Magazine. This long article was also carried by the net version of Hazards Magazine and on the site of a project called InjuryWatch. The article had no references on either site and claimed that the information about Doll and Monsanto had been uncovered by the article’s author.

 

 My central concern over the month which followed the publication of this story, was to find out how information which I had exclusively researched, found and written up and that had been in the Public domain for three years had turned up without being referenced in someone else’s article.  A second concern was with the contemporary state of journalism in Britain. How could the Guardian pay out £300 pounds for a scoop which had circulated on the internet for three years. The question invites a discussion of real issues in contemporary journalism, which in the twenty first century, seems to have lost touch with people and their stories reflecting instead disembodied  and sometimes cynical opinions of a relatively privileged group of professionals.

 

 Finally, as someone who has tried to stick doggedly to an ethical framework over a quarter of a century of writing about people without power, I thought it reasonable that the main actors in this story at least apologise for usurping my work.

 

 I began organising against the wrong which I considered had been done me, by writing to the Guardian and the Today programme. I followed up the correspondence and new information that resulted, with a corrected draft of a document SCOOP! which I had begun to write. When I had a finished draft, I sent the document to Rory O’Neill the ‘author’ of the article that appeared in Hazards Magazine and on the Injurywatch web site.

 

My initial message to Rory O’Neill asked for two things, a full account of how the situation had transpired and a simple apology from those involved. First, for the repeating of my work without reference and secondly for the stress and upset which this had  caused me; I consider my investigative writing about Sir Richard Doll as perhaps my most important work. My email to O’Neill was not answered by him but by Karl Waldron who seemingly chose to represent him. Waldron wrote from an organisation called LegalWatch and described himself as the employer of Conrad Murray the co-ordinator of InjuryWatch.

 

The first email That Waldron returned to me did explain after a fashion what had happened, but the correspondence as a whole suggested that Rory O’Neill was a journalist incapable of making an apology or even answering his own mail. This is a man whose ‘top saying’, is reported as ‘Be annoying, be very annoying’.  The exchange with Karl Waldron, petered out when he repeatedly made it clear that he and O’Neill thought no apology was deserved. In their opinion, not only was I an ineffectual campaigner, but was unlikely to be considered as a serious journalist or writer by anyone.

 

 Perhaps however, the most serious consistent hint in Waldron’s emails, was that he, Rory O’Neill and the co-ordinator of InjuryWatch Conrad Murray or others might consider suing me for libel on the basis of SCOOP!, which by then had been posted on my web site. I considered this threat very serious, because it involves a journalist who works for a trades union funded campaign magazine, and could be seen as an attempt to censure my views, which were critical of his  behaviour.

 

 At this point, I made up my mind to go on the offensive. I decided to do two things, firstly, make changes in SCOOP! where my feelings had drifted to describe Rory O’Neill’s work as plagiarism or anyone’s actions as unprofessional and to explain more exactly what I felt and meant about the hijacking of my information.

Secondly, to give O’Neill one last chance to issue an apology to me before I became seriously annoying.

 

 Since I decided on this strategy and took down SCOOP! From my web site, the document and myself became the subject of a legal letter, prior to an action, sent by Fergal Parkinson, a minor player in the story, to my lawyers. I know that this threat of an action  was begun because I was still drawing attention to the out of context release of my research information on the front page of the Guardian and on the Today programme. It appears that following their expose which put a complete halt on any discussion about the bias in Doll’s work, those who had engineered this situation did not want the matter discussed any further. This particularly applied to Rory O’Neill who had written the article involved and who had presented the results of my research under his own name.

 

O’Neill has not answered one of my communications addressed to him and has rather hidden behind Karl Waldron’s skirt. As a campaigning journalist editing a trades union funded magazine, I think that O’Neill should be accountable for what he writes. I have now sent my last letter to O’Neill asking simply for an apology, which I could use if in the future any conflict arises over the authenticity of my research. I received no reply.

 

 After this document goes up on my web site, I intend to campaign long and hard against O’Neill for an inquiry into how and why his article was published in Hazards Magazine and on the InjuryWatch web site.

 

Martin J Walker

January 13 2007

 

SCOOP TWO! was posted on the Slingshot Publications web site on Sunday January 14, 2007, and should be considered the last and most correct version of any similar documents. All documents prior to this one, entitled SCOOP! contain errors, inevitable in a document which attempts to assemble a piece of recent history, depending on the whole upon people who do not want this history to come to light. Nevertheless the author apologises for any wrongful inferences or downright mistakes which might have occurred in the first edition of SCOOP!