Normally on this blog I give my opinions on things on what I like and what I dislike, but here I want to make a few things straight.
On Sunday night, a BBC producer, specifically Richard Carr, tweeted the following: “Tedious delayed EasyJet flight. Enlivened by loud drunk TV presenter. Fortunately not a BBC TV presenter though. I give you two guesses…”
Obviously that led to a few people guessing who it may be. Which I guess, being Twitter, is to be expected, when you tweet something people respond. Someone asked whether the person in question’s first name began with a ‘T’ or ‘M’. He said “neither“.
Fast forward to last night, and this Daily Mail article written by Charles Sale. For those unaware of who Charles Sale is, he is a writer for the paper who writes daily sports columns covering the latest stories and gossip with ‘inside sources’, so to say.
The article states, specifically, that Simon Lazenby was the person acting drunk on the EasyJet flight. Now, I do not know whether those claims are true or not, Charles Sale is an insider whereas I am not. Therefore his words hold more strength than mine. But what I do not like, is when a member of the Formula 1 paddock, specifically Caterham’s Head of Communications Tom Webb and quashes the entire article, by saying: “Just seen Charlie Sale’s column today. What a complete load of lies. Good to see he’s not on his usual Beeb bash, but check your facts CS.”
Because by tweeting that, it makes it abundantly clear to me, that Lazenby was not the person involved in said incident on Sunday night, and therefore the article is an attempt at smearing and character defamation. The problem, is that the article is now being tweeted and shared with others all over Twitter, I seen one person refer to him as a “prick”. At the end of the day, there are real people, doing their job to the best of their ability. Yes, you can criticise their presenting, or their commentating or whatever may be. But unless you know them personally, you are in absolutely no position to call them a “prick” based on one single article, which, in this case, may not even be true at all.
I thought I would publish this particular blog, to set the record straight and to quash the article written by the Daily Mail which appears to be a smearing campaign, plain and simple. Irrespective of whether I like him or dislike him as presenter of the Sky Sports F1 show, what I do not like is people (or publications) who blatantly write articles, knowing what they are publishing is not strictly true and is only there to smear somebody else.
UPDATE at 19:31 on 26th June: The story has now been removed from the Daily Mail website.
UPDATE at 21:40 on 26th June: The article is back online at the same place.
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