I’m no fan of Ally Fogg – I believe the feeling may be mutual – but his latest blog piece is well worth reading. He writes:
I will leave it to you to decide whether you think this sorry story is a case of calculated skulduggery deliberately designed to cynically mislead the public about the true nature of so-called violence against women and girls, or lazy indifference to the actual facts.
Given that the ‘sorry story’ referred to here is a piece published online by the Guardian hours in advance of the publication of a CPS VAWG report and press release, thereby influencing subsequent media coverage – we saw exactly the same phenomenon with the paper’s four recent attacks on Philip Davies MP, after his talk at our conference – ‘calculated skulduggery’ is surely the more obvious explanation – lazy indifference to the actual facts being par for the course for Guardian articles on such issues. And I have little doubt that even Ally Fogg knows that.