The rather provocative title (you know where it's going) comes from Leapy Lee's latest contribution to the Euro Weekly News (an English-language free sheet left in hopeful piles in bars and shops along the coast of Spain).
Leapy has been writing for the Weenie for around fifteen years and has never really moved away from his one-note repertoire. He writes about immigrants: the ones in the UK that is (in a paper that should be commenting about Spain).
What does he have to say this time? Well, he says that he, too, is an immigrant, worked and came to live legally here in Spain. He has, he says, nothing against legal immigrants in the UK (I think he has, but that's just an opinion). Then he says this about himself to highlight his point:
'...I did not, create 'no go' areas, consider myself to be above local laws, mow down or slaughter innocent civilians while screaming 'Jesus is great', or scream racism when decisions didn't go my way...'. Leaky wants to control immigration into the UK, he says, as, although he does 'of course recognise that many immigrants are not of this ilk and contribute invaluable input...' (you can imagine him dropping by their homes for a cup of sugar and a gossip), he does 'not condone millions of ungrateful layabouts and fanatics, hell bent on screwing as much as they can from their host countries...'.
And so on. Just about every week.
While Leaky is welcome to his views (after all, as he would be the first to admit, it takes all sorts) we must wonder at the editorial policy of the newspaper that prints him.
Week after week.
For about 5 years I helped run a small newspaper in Spain. What I learned was that in order to survive, the editorial policy has to follow the views of the people who pay for the publication, i.e. the advertisers. Either you accept their views, sell lots of advertisements and keep the paper running, or you don't accept their views, don't sell ads and have to close down. This applies especially to free weekly papers - the opinions of readers normally have no influence whatsoever on editorial policy. After all, they don't pay for the costs, do they? And any adverse comments from readers can be simply ignored and filed in the waste paper basket.
ReplyDeleteHowever, we as readers are perfectly free to draw our own conclusions as to what sort of people advertise in the sort of paper that publishes such articles.
That is an extremely astute comment Jan - on what is a very pertinent piece. And about time too.
ReplyDeleteDespite being the publisher of a free newspaper here in Spain myself I actually think we should be held to account for the views and stories we publish.
And as you say the views of the rabid racist Leapy probably reflect his employers.
I only wish advertisers would take responsibility and stop supporting a rag and man who once wrote that the reason hospitals in the UK were filthy and suffering from high infection rates was because most of the cleaners are Muslims and they have lower hygiene standards than Christians!
Jon Clarke (olive press)