Two disconnected items here from the Eye.
Firstly. The best of the journalists in the Business/Finance papers have made a speciality of it. The very best columnists are, however, even more specialised, being economists who have learned to be journalists. There is a mass of news for them to report but it takes experience to sift the significant from the self-serving and to see the interaction between stories and complicated figures and express them clearly. It’s the ‘sheep and the goats’ syndrome and there are far too many ‘goats’’ right now. If the Eye is right about this one it would mark a real dumbing-down.
While on the subject of the press it is reported that Murdoch will charge for access to articles in his newspaper websites. If he does, the rest will follow. I already pay the FT for access to its articles but a general charge could mark my retirement from the scene.
Secondly I update the story of the young man extradited to greece pending a trial on a possible manslaughter charge, without being given a hearing in the British Courts at all, even to determ ine if he had any case to answer. But our ministers were asleep when they agreed to this monstrous denial of justice under the EU’s European Arrest Warrant. All these laws supposedly to combat terrorism are repeatedly used for matters that have no connection with terrorism at all.
Christina
PRIVATE EYE1242 7-20.8.09
1. Street of Shame
Incredulity all round at the Sunday Telegraph, after the appointment Kamal Ahmed as City Editor.
Not only does he lack any experience as a business hack, he also has a rather tarnished reputation from his stint Political Editor of the Observer, where he famously relied on Alistair Campbell to feed him stories on the run up to the Iraq war - as described in Nick Davies' book, 'Flat Earth News'.
Ahmed's subsequent career as spin doctor for Trevor Phillips at the Human Rights and Equality Commission was equally calamitous as the watch dog succumbed to canine distemper and ring worm. So now it's back to Fleet Street for the nimble footed hack.
His move to the Sunday Telegraph has little to do with the paper's editor Ian MacGregor it was the brainwave of Telegraph Editor in Chief Will Lewis. For Ahmed does have one important qualification for the job; he's been a mate of Lewis ever since they both studied journalism at City University two decades ago.
2. HP SAUCE
GREEK TRAGEDY
Andrew Symeou whose case was first highlighted in Eye 1217 last year , is now likely to spend months in a Greek jail before his case is even heard, after law lords here refused to hear his appeal against extradition.
Mr Symeou, now aged 20, was extradited under the fast-track European Arrest Warrant last month, without any British court considering the supposed evidence that he was responsible for the manslaughter of a fellow holiday maker in Zante in 2007. The Eye - which has seen the evidence assembled by the Greek police - described their case last August as “flawed, contradictory and , in places, ludicrous.”
Jago Russell, chief executive of Fair Trials International , agrees, saying “The case against Andrew Symeou is built on mistaken identity, conflicting evikdence and a fl;awed police investigation”,
Although Mr Symeou has made no attempt to abscond since the day Scotland Yard officers turned up at his door last year, the Greek court refused him bail pending his trial because he has no permanent homed in Greece. Her ;lost his case against extradition earlier this year and the law lords refused to hear and appeal, saying his case “did not have an arguable point of law of general public importance”.
Surely the question of whether someone should be extradited to face trial abroad without even considering questions of police misconduct, including violent intimidation of witnesses, is a matter of public importance.
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