Privacy and Injunctions - Evidence - Parliament

Trinity Mirror plc, and Richard Wallace, editor, Daily Mirror—Oral evidence (QQ 1233–
1305)
Q159 Chair: I am intrigued that, on the one hand, you edit a red-top tabloid,
which is feeding in the celebrity market and printing stories of this kind. You told my
colleague, Mr Farrelly, you did not approve of the Max Mosley story. What was it about the
Max Mosley story you did not like?
Richard Wallace: It was a matter of personal taste. Personally I did not think that
my readers would have heard of Max Mosley, on the one hand. Secondly, it was not to my
personal taste.
story?
Q160 Chair: So if it had been a Premier League footballer, would you have run the
Richard Wallace: I cannot say yes or no on that. It would depend on so many
circumstances: who the player was; what was already out there about him.
Q161 Chair: One of the points Max Mosley makes is that to some extent you as
an individual editor, or indeed the editor of the News of the World, are reaching these
decisions based on your own taste, which has huge ramifications for the lives of the people
concerned.
Richard Wallace: Absolutely. It is a very fine line that we walk every day. I consult
my colleagues and my legal department. Also, something that has been missed a little bit in
the current high profile of these issues is the public—they tend to let you know, and I
believe they let the News of the World know in that case, when they are not particularly
enamoured with a story. If you make an error, certainly when it comes to consistently
publishing a particular type of story, they let you know, and you have to move your tiller
accordingly; they are very quick to let you know.
Q162 Chair: In terms of falling sales?
Richard Wallace: Well, yes. I mean the ultimate example is how I got my job. We
published on the previous editor’s watch a set of photos of Iraqi abuse that turned out to be
hoax pictures, and we published a front-page apology. As a result of that apology we lost
40,000 sales overnight. I took over the editor’s chair after that and got into a dialogue a
year later with some of those people who had left us, and they made it very clear: “You
broke the trust. We trust you; we have had The Mirror in our house for a couple of
generations, and what you did was unforgiveable. I am sure you are a very nice young man,
but we are not coming back.” That is the reality of how people react to mistakes that you
make editorially.
Q163 Chair: Although the editor concerned seems to have done alright.
Richard Wallace: Yes, I hear he has gone on to better things.
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