Andrew Morrison
#5. The Sun pulled an article about the Health Secretary’s complacency…during a pandemic
Despite being months into the Coronavirus pandemic crisis, when frontline workers are still not being routinely tested and PPE shortages are still troubling, the Scottish Health Secretary, Jeane Freeman, had time in her schedule to tweet she would chase up ASDA for Nationalist journalist Angela Haggerty’s groceries.
This, rightly, attracted much scorn and derision. The Sun ran a perfectly legitimate article, which they then deleted, leaving little trace that this story ever existed – an airbrush job the Ministry of Truth would be proud of.
The only traces this ever happened are a blog post and some badly Photoshopped memes of Jeane standing in front of a podium with ASDA branding on it.
If that wasn’t enough, The Herald was ‘encouraged’ to change a headline the SNP took objection to, altering ‘Care home staff blamed for Scotland’s deadly wave of infections’ to ‘Staff are primary route for deadly virus into Scotland’s care homes’ – because they didn’t like how the paper reported the news.
For Jeane Freeman, her PPE is ‘a Poison Pen Epistle’ drafted to a newspaper editor, then ‘Whoops!’ is slapped on the story – just like a supermarket yellow-label – discounting something that’s deemed past its best.
Sent in by a reader…