Press award
Sir: One of the IPC press awards this year was to Mr John Clare of the Times as news reporter of the year. The only piece of journalism that I can recall of Mr John Clare in the last twelve months was an interview of his with Alan Paton on July 23, catch-lined 'South Africa's leading novelist revises his attitude to apartheid,' which provoked from Mr Paton a strongly worded denial in the letter columns of the same paper on the following day. Mr Paton's long list of rebuttals ended as follows: "I do not intend to try your patience with further rebuttals, except to say that your interviewer gave me no indication that he intended to make a denigratory report. In fact he gave the exact opposite impression. Let him take note that I have never ceased to expose and condemn the cruelties and injustices of apartheid, and shall never cease to do so. Your headline 'South Africa's leading novelist revises his attitude to apartheid' is untrue, and with my typescript in his hand your interviewer should have known that it was untrue,"
On this evidence it rather seems to me that Mr John Clare is a reporter who needs watching rather than rewarding. Surely it is not at all desirable that the system of press awards should be used to encourage this kind of journalistic malpractice.
Peregrine Worsthome 14 Avlie Gardens, London W8
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