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Editor offers tongue-in-cheek ‘apology’ for Brexit story-advert juxtaposition

An editor has issued a tongue-in-cheek apology after a story about the “devastating effect” Brexit could have on his patch’s economy appeared alongside a large advertisement for a pro-Leave rally.

The story appeared on Birmingham Live’s homepage yesterday, surrounded by an ad for the Save Brexit Rally, which is due to be held at the National Conference Centre in Birmingham on Sunday.

Birmingham Live’s sister daily the Birmingham Mail openly backed a Remain vote ahead of the 2016 referendum, and editor Marc Reeves has since stated the newspaper is opposed to a “hard Brexit”.

Marc told HTFP his “hand slipped” as he was laying out the page after posting on Twitter about the Birmingham Live homepage juxtaposition yesterday afternoon.

He wrote: “I have no problem with perfectly legal advertising on Birmingham Live – it just so happens that our current top story takes a different tack #completecoincidence #stopbrexit.”

Asked about the story-advert juxtaposition by HTFP, Marc responded: “I really don’t know what happened.

“No sooner had I noticed the ad for the pro-Brexit rally appear on our homepage as a big takeover ad, that my hand slipped and before I knew it, we were splashing the site on a story laying out just how much Brexit is going to ruin the West Midlands economy.

“I’d like to apologise to all concerned.”

3 comments

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  • September 28, 2018 at 5:55 pm
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    How does he know Brexit will ruin the local economy. Does he have a crystal ball? I wish people were more positive.

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  • September 29, 2018 at 7:17 pm
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    Nice try at asserting editorial independence but sadly the BirminghamLive website is so swamped with pop-ups, adverts, irrelevant teasers, reruns of listicle-based fluff and miscellaneous crud, it’s hard for any real news to make much of an impact.

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  • October 1, 2018 at 12:16 pm
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    “How does he know Brexit will ruin the local economy.”

    Because every single credible expert has said from the very outset that Brexit will cripple Britain financially. Even Nigel Farage has conceded this in interviews, but effectively said, ‘Yes, you’ll be poorer, but you’ll have your sovereignty back’.

    (What he actually meant was, ‘Yes, you’ll be poorer, which is exactly what I want – particularly after your workers rights have been removed, as you’ll all be so desperate for whatever money you can get that you’ll not dare challenge your rich employers about anything they do, no matter how egregious’.)

    There was a very interesting documentary series on BBC a while back where they were following Donald Trump’s ambassador in America. He went into a meeting with a bunch of American finance experts to be briefed before giving a major speech. They were talking about Brexit and all of the American experts said that Britain was catastrophically hamstrung by this decision – that the two futures Britain faced after leaving the EU were either ‘worse off than before but just about managing’, or, ‘totally financially ruined’.

    But they then told the ambassador that he could not say this in his speech because the British public didn’t want to hear it. The experts said the British public was hopelessly deluded about Brexit, fervently believed it was good for the country and that if he told them the truth he would be dismissed and/or attacked.

    They often say that if you want to know the truth about your own country, you should read other countries’ press. When you look at the way other countries report on Brexit, they talk about us the way we talk about the idiots who elected Donald Trump. They think we’re a nation of turkeys voting for Christmas.

    As a wise person once wrote: “Hatred has stolen the conversation. The poor are now voting against themselves. But politics is not about left or right. It’s about up and down. The few screwing the many.”

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