Careful What You Write...

In one of those moments of vanity Googling (come on, we all do it), I was quite amazed to discover I had been quoted in an article in the Sunday Life, one of Northern Ireland's biggest Sunday newspapers, and part of the same stable as the Belfast Telegraph. Hmm, thinks I, I don't remember talking to anyone from the Sunday Life...

The article in question concerned a recent storm-in-a-teacup involving bestselling local author Colin Bateman. Briefly, a series of children's books by Colin features a young girl with Albinism. Given that Colin has a bit of honesty about him, he doesn't particularly sugar coat the character's experience, and she suffers some abuse because of her appearance. Fair enough, you'd rightly think, a kid with Albinism isn't going to go through life without getting some stick off other kids.

Apparently, some schoolkids didn't agree. Under the supervision of their teacher, they composed a letter of complaint to the author. Somewhere along the way, BBC Northern Ireland picked up on this and ran a story about it on their nightly news bulletin. So far, so trivial.

Anyway, Colin Bateman was rightly peeved and posted a strongly worded, but humorous, rebuttal on his blog. In a spot of media recycling, the Sunday Life ran a story about the whole sorry affair, quoting Colin verbatim.

And down near the bottom is this snippet:

'Fellow Northern Irish author Stuart Neville, who has released his debut novel The Ghosts of Belfast, sprang to Bateman's defence. "The BBC must miss having bombs and kneecappings to report," he said.'

YOU WHAT?!

And then I remembered - I'd left a comment on Colin's blog, which I immediately forgot about. And here I am, a couple of months later, discovering my own throw-away quip has been immortalised by the Sunday Life.

Now, there are a couple of inaccuracies and a possible false impression in this. First, "sprang to Bateman's defence" is a bit strong. I don't think I even got out of my chair when I typed it. Second, my debut novel won't see daylight until late next summer at the earliest (but, hey, thanks for plug, Sunday Life!). Also, this kind of gives the impression that there is some connection between Colin Bateman and me. Aside from a very nice congratulatory email he sent me a while back, Colin Bateman doesn't know me at all, and vice versa. I just happened to chip in on a rather daft topic on his blog one day.

Now, don't get me wrong; part of me is actually quite pleased to get a mention in one of our more popular newspapers, and I don't mind being shown to be on Colin's side in the matter (I am), and I don't even mind that the story is mostly a cut-and-paste job that's hardly a shining example of exhaustively researched journalism. But it does bother me a great deal that a simple glib comment I made with little thought behind it found its way into a national newspaper with my name on it. There's a lesson in that, folks...

Read the offending article here.