The News of the World: So, what about Coulson?

The News of the World rightly makes a fuss about Prince Harry using racist terms such as "Paki" and "raghead". It's good to see that a newspaper, whose owner Rupert Murdoch thinks Muslims are "inferior", can rise above proprietorial prejudice and nail a social evil.

Now that it has set such a good example, perhaps it would like to turn its attention to another social evil. The Conservative Party's director of communications, Andy Coulson, was recently found by an employment tribunal to have presided over a "culture of bullying" at his previous place of employment. His conduct made one reporter's life a misery. He has not publicly denied misconduct. To date, no anti-bullying organisation, no periodical that I know of (Private Eye aside), and certainly no Tory, has condemned or questioned his behaviour. Coulson would appear to be inviolable. Is it that bullying is not regarded as serious as racism? Are we picking and choosing social evils according to circulation value?

The fact that Coulson's last job was the editorship of the News of the World shouldn't put the paper off.