A defence of "low" journalism

Abstract

In October 1997 the Evening Standard described the Sunday Times's battle to gain compensation for victims of the drug thalidomide - which ended in the 1970s - as one of "the great campaigns of news paper history". As often before, it was used as a benchmark against which to measure journalistic attempts to remedy injustice. ϒet it remains a matter of controversy: last year Phillip Knightley, the Sunday Times writer who served longest on the case, said in his memoirs that it was "not the great success it was made out to be"- and was greeted by some reviewers as a welcome iconoclast, and witness to the overblown claims of investigative journalism. Here BRUCE PAGE, who uncovered the critical scientific and financial details of the story, takes a different view, and reveals previously-unpublicised aspects of the Sunday Times's operation.