Letter: Tabloid journalists should be neither sheep nor dogs

THE CONCLUSION to your editorial 'Live by the Mail, die by the Mail' (27 September), which amounts to a vindication of the methods of tabloid newspapers, is misguided.

I think David Mellor had no option but to resign following his ill-judged actions, yet the relentless manner in which he was hounded out of office by some distinctly unsavoury, even barbaric, journalism does not merit your approbation.

True, the hypocrisy of a former minister, who benefited without protest from a similarly vitriolic campaign against Neil Kinnock in the run-up to April's election, now blaming those same newspapers for his own downfall is not a little ironic.

Yet you seem to endorse these tabloid actions as a case of Mr Mellor living and dying by the same sword (or Mail]). If the tabloid attacks on Mr Mellor were distasteful, their pre-electon tirade against Mr Kinnock was intolerable.

Consequently, it is disappointing that you applaud such abhorrent 'journalism' with the view that the press would 'be better a pack of dogs than a flock of sheep'. There is a large and respectable area of conduct between these two extremes.

Richard Bryant

Hale, Cheshire