High old Times
Sir: The Spectator has had a high old time over the past three weeks at the expense of the Sunday Times. Indeed you have devoted almost as much space to Hitler's diaries as we have. Of course, we present a sizeable target: great newspaper buys pup, is had, fails to apologise in a sufficiently ab- ject manner. There is room for criticism, and, as you can imagine, there has been no lack of post-mortems within this newspaper either.
But I think it would only be fair to draw a distinction between our initial mistake in presenting the diaries as real, and the way we have subsequently investigated both the affair itself and our own role in it. I would argue that in this latter endeavour we have nothing to be ashamed of. In fact I note that most of the facts on which your coverage was based last week come from our own reporting.
We faced two choices once we discovered that the checking of the diaries had been in- adequate. Either to wash our hands of the whole business and hope that it would go away. Or to explain what had happened and to find out as much as we could about the origins of the hoax. At the direction of the Editor, and together with some of my colleagues, I have been closely involved in this latter course. Ironically, because of our partnership with Stern magazine in this ill- fated venture, we were probably in the best position to do that, and we believed that the
very least we could do for our readers was to pursue the investigation.
In the end, the reputation of the Sunday Times is based on the quality of its own journalism rather than the properties it buys in from outside and if we can rescue something from the ashes of the Hitler fiasco then perhaps the best way to do it is to rake them thoroughly.
Magnus Linklater
Executive Editor (Features),
Sunday Times,
200 Gray's Inn Road, London WCI
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