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Editor calls for Blunkett apology

Editor Nigel Pickover has called for David Blunkett to aplogise to the regional press. Here is his letter in full:

Letter to Rt. Hon David Blunkett,
Home Secretary,
50, Queen Anne’s Gate,
London,
SW1H 9AT

Dear Home Secretary,

I am a British daily newspaper editor and, I very much hope, am not insane!

I refer to your conference address in London on Wednesday 19 June when you wrote you had the ‘misfortune, every day, to read Britain’s newspapers and commentaries and leader writers ….. we are almost on the edge of insanity’.

In your comments you make the same tired knee-jerk attack on the Press mistake – lumping the regional press in with our national colleagues who have become your adversaries.

To thousands of hard-working regional newspaper journalists your comments are as offensive as they inaccurate, and I ask you to apologise for your remarks.

I have had the honour of working on three regional daily titles, where decent, honourable men and women serve their readers with a mixture of hard work, skill and diligence. Did you mean your attack to fall on papers like my first title, the excellent Sheffield Star, pride of a city in which you are an MP.

My current paper is another “Star”, The Evening Star, Ipswich, where we campaign relentlessly and successfully on behalf of our readers. On my Suffolk title we are a caring, campaigning, feisty, loyal, patriotic, local newspaper. We are the region’s Newspaper of the Year and are shortlisted for two national awards.

Just recently an Evening Star murder reward – in support of a Suffolk Police inquiry – was paid in full after an informant was persuaded to come forward. So we helped to capture an evil killer who, in turn, was jailed for life and thus taken off our streets. Just how insane is that?

Yours sincerely,

Nigel Pickover,

Editor

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