gravalicious

“A more famous case is that of Stephen Lawrence, the black schoolboy whose murder in August 1993 remains unpunished after bungling by London police, the Daily Mail famously - and courageously - named his five alleged killers on it’s front page in February 1997. One of those directly involved says that the Mail’s approach to the story began by being hostile. They sent their only black news reporter, Hal Austin, to interview the dead boy’s father, Neville Lawrence, with instructions to run a story attacking the groups who were campaigning for a new inquiry into the murder. ‘We don’t want rent-a-mob left wingers - that was the line.’ During that interview, Neville Lawrence realised Austin’s editor was the Mr Dacre for whom he had done some plastering in Islington some years earlier. By the time Austin sat down to write his story, the highly respectable Neville Lawrence had contacted Dacre, and the news desk told him to change the line: 'Do something sympathetic.’”