Talk:Andrew Gilligan

message: Davidpatrick - Your contributions are rhetorical, not factual, are clearly slanted in favour of the Government and against Gilligan, and read much like the alterations previously made by Kevin Marsh. There is a consistent tone of belittlement of Gilligan and an attempt to paint the activities of the Government and Alastair Campbell in a better light. For instance, "a series of aggressively critical articles" - actually most were factual and none have been denied. "Gilligan broke a number of stories about what he claimed were the British military's shortcomings" - as the following sentences make clear, they were real, not claimed shortcomings, supported by MoD documents and the National Audit Office. "Government press officers followed the strict letter of the law" - nobody has ever argued that their actions were illegal, but that they were both unprecedented and highly questionable. As the version you changed put it, they participated in an elaborate exercise to ensure Kelly's name came into the public domain, providing journalists with a series of clues and confirming the name to any who deduced it. 
Your contributions also contain a number of significant factual inaccuracies. For instance: "Susan Watts' tape of the conversation would prove that Gilligan's assertion was a lie" - untrue as well as slanted. "For some reason Gilligan did not explain, two versions of Gilligan's notes were found, only one of which mentioned Alastair Campbell." In fact, Gilligan did explain the reason - at length - to the Hutton inquiry. The claim that Lord Butler "stated that the Government had not acted as Gilligan claimed" is also false - Butler made no mention of Gilligan at all. "This totally disproved the primary assertion... that Campbell had been responsible for the suppressions." Again, it did nothing of the sort, and again, the kind of thing that Alastair Campbell himself could have written. Sockpuppeting - denied by Gilligan and not supported by any hard evidence, subject of a previous revert-war in this entry.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Craig142 (talk • contribs) 03:38, 20 May 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Untitled

message: I've removed quite a bit of material that was entirely unsourced and which seemed to have a worrying POV tone to it. At the same time, I recognise that the material was salient in terms of an overall consideration of Gilligan's career; therefore, I suggest that it be reinstated, gradually, with proper sources. Jprw (talk) 06:55, 22 May 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: Removal of unsourced material

message: Recent edits have left the entry with no mention whatsoever of Gilligan's career as a journalist at the London Evening Standard. In my view, this is a serious omission from his biography, not least because of his widely noted role in the reporting of the mayoral elections; the award mentioned in the entry was for his work at the London Evening Standard. UsamahWard (talk) 13:13, 21 October 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Andrew Gilligan and the London Evening Standard 

message: FYI, there's a discussion about this Wikipedia article at the Biographies of Living Persons Noticeboard.Anythingyouwant (talk) 07:24, 5 November 2013 (UTC)
thread_title: BLPN discussion

message: I have restored the "sexed up" tale to the lede.  There doesn't seem to be a valid reason to leave it out of the bio.  I would also suggest removing the neutrality tag - the only reason I haven't done so myself is that I would like some other opinion on this.  --Roxy the dog (resonate) 08:46, 17 November 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Completely agree on both. The "sexed up" report is pretty much the only thing he's known for.  DeCausa (talk) 09:07, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

text: I won't restore the tag, but the whole complicated episode needs clarifying by expansion. If it was just AG expressing his own opinion there wouldn't have been anything like the fuss there was.  Johnbod (talk) 12:35, 17 November 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Quite so. It neertds its own sub-section with a full explanation. The comments trying to down play it in his career the above thread are ludicrous eg in this "10 years later" retrospective in The Independent, it talks about the incident propelling him to instant fame and "he has spent years where 'my first wish was to be known for something other than the Hutton Inquiry' ". DeCausa (talk) 14:14, 17 November 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Gilligan's entry was created solely on the basis of his BBC report, and this article used to be more substantial, but over the years editors appear at regular intervals to give him a positive makeover. The attempt to remove his claim to fame from the lede just shows how far people will go, and it won't end there I'm sure.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.183.140.13 (talk) 15:32, 17 November 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Personally I don't see a censored entry as "positive" especially as the vast majority of people looking will realize there's something missing. Gilligan certainly didn't handle things perfectly, but I'm one of many who think he was more sinned against than sinning. Some people are evidently trying to forget the whole thing, but that won't work. 01:15, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

text: Looking through the article history, I see that there used to be much more on this. Apart from seeing a steady filleting of the article to cut it out, the other interesting trend is that SPA's regularly show up to monitor what's said about it. DeCausa (talk) 16:45, 17 November 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: So true, the recent IP88... being yet another example of such highly suspicious behaviour you'd expect an army of bots and seasoned editors to be all over him/her. Good luck though, I gave up years ago, it eats into your soul, every time I check back it gets worse.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.183.128.40 (talk) 18:08, 17 November 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: What it really needs is rock-solid sourcing, preferably to books. Then a firm line taken to defend the good version. Johnbod (talk) 01:17, 18 November 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sexing up the lede - neutrality tag 

message: I think the article would benefit with the addition of two sections: the first expanding the BBC report and the implications for Gilligan - it doesn't need to go into great detail, there are already substantial articles on the Hutton Inquiry and David Kelly; and the second on his reporting of the 2008 election for London Mayor, to give the reader a sense of why his reporting was considered an important factor in Ken Livingstone's downfall, and merited the accolade of Journalist of the Year. There are plenty of strong secondary sources for both, I don't think it would be hard to develop. UsamahWard (talk) 20:08, 18 November 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Good luck with that, the first will get ground down, until it's a shadow of the second. Like the sock-puppeting, it was debated to death 4 years ago, finally some editors arrived to say of course it should stay, now it's been deleted again and nothing's changed, same old dodgy excuses, and it looks like you gave up. Sorry for the total downer!  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.183.128.84 (talk) 21:54, 18 November 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Being so negative doesn't help, why not try to contribute instead? And the sockpuppeting issue is simply unresolved, maybe more people will add their views. I certainly haven't given up, there's just nothing I can add to the discussion that I haven't already said. UsamahWard (talk) 18:32, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

text: Agree, & repeat my comment in the previous section re sourcing. Johnbod (talk) 21:45, 19 November 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Agree too. DeCausa (talk) 22:07, 19 November 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Proposal for new sections 

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