Biteback (the publishing company owned by Iain Dale) recently published a biography of Wayne Rooney called Rooney’s Gold. It’s by investigative journalist John Sweeney. It is also the subject of a very very poor front page story (even by their sewer standards) on today’s Daily Star.
Stay calm folks, this post isn’t about football. It’s about bullying and threats.
From Schillings.
You know, the “reputation management” people whose clients include that well known bastion of ethics Phorm. Now some of the people involved in the anti-Phorm and anti-DPI campaign can tell you a bit about Schillings. Here’s one example. Threats over information already in the public domain.
Read Iain Dale’s response to the pathetic Daily Star, about WHSmith’s capitulation and Schillings’ attempts to bully Biteback into censoring the book by intimidating their customers. One point in particular highlights another reason why this country needs libel reform:
If publishers accede to threats like this it effectively means that no one can write a celebrity biography any longer unless it is a complete hagiography. Our libel laws are allowing the likes of Schillings to threaten, bully and intimidate authors and publishers into abandoning perfectly legitimate books for fear of their whole company’s existence coming under threat. This cannot be right and any reform of the libel laws must surely encompass this aspect of the law.
I’m not a football fan but I may well buy the book to support Biteback and spite Schillings.