Notes
As befits the chairman of a serious news- paper, Mr 'Tiny' Rowland has taken Mr Donald Trelford, the editor of the Observer, to task for the 'unsubstantiated' nature of his report last Sunday on atrocities in Matabeleland. But perhaps Mr Rowland was over-zealous for his paper's reputation in expressing his criticisms in a Public letter to a third party, Mr Robert Mugabe, the Prime Minister of Zimbabwe, and in appearing on the BBC first to say that he would like to see Mr Trelford's evidence and then (in the same breath) that he was not interested in the evidence anyway because Mr Trelford had spent such a short time in Matabeleland. If Mr Trelford had lingered there, going deeper and deeper into the killings in the area, Would Mr Rowland have been delighted at his thoroughness, or might he have com- plained that Mr Trelford was neglecting his editorial duties, and should return home? There have been occasions in the past when Mr Rowland has been able to rein in his en- thusiasm for journalistic integrity, even in in-
sistence It was at Mr Rowland's n-
sistence that the Observer appointed Mr Godwin Matatu as its roving Africa cor- respondent. Mr Matatu, a relation of the Zimbabwean cabinet minister, Eddison J. Zvogbo, once lifted an article from the Spectator and published it under his own name in Africa magazine. Nor, when the Observer mounted its attack on Mrs That- cher's alleged business connection with her son Mark, did Mr Rowland write as he did to Mr Mugabe: 'I take full responsibility for w hat in my view was discourteous, dis- ingenuous •and wrong in the editor of a ,,erl°us paper ...' Mr Trelford is sticking uravely to his story. Is the stage now set for another battle between a very small editor and a very rich proprietor? At least in the case of the Times, Mr Murdoch was con- cerned for the success of his newspaper. Mr reporting anxieties about 'accuracy' in reporting Zimbabwe spring from different Motives.
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