It’s been a strange few days on Twitter both personally and professionally. There are many, many pros to social media, but we are all too well aware of the cons too.
In my working life as a journalist and a columnist, I have been used to sharing my opinions in newspapers and on television. For that reason, I understand the importance of facts, and being able to evidence what I say. When I worked as an executive editor at the Daily Mail it was my job every Friday to liaise with our lawyers with regards to big Saturday news investigations. I had to check with reporters and their sources that we could stand up everything we were publishing should a legal action be made. I loved this job as I’m a bit of a legal geek — I was also a court reporter for two years when I started out in journalism.
People like to say that everything in newspapers is rubbish but if you’ve ever spent a few hours with newspaper lawyers or nose deep in McNae’s Law for Journalists you will know that what the public …