Claiming sole credit

The HoS editorial:

It is a small victory but an important one. Parliament’s regulations review committee has upheld our complaint against the secrecy of teachers’ disciplinary proceedings.

Except it wasn’t their complaint. It was Graeme Edgeler’s. Graeme discovered that one could complain about it to the Regulations Review Committee, write the complaint and filed it. The Herald on Sunday then jumped on board and asked if they could be joined to the complaint – something Graeme agreed to.

The HoS has run a good campaign on the issue of teacher name suppression, and I think it is a good thing they joined the complaint. But would it have hurt them to acknowledge in their editorial the person who actually did the complaint, as the news story did?

The Herald on Sunday challenged the rule because we believe, like the Law Commission among others, it is inconsistent with the principle of open justice necessary for public confidence in judicial proceedings at any level.

Again, Edgeler challenged the rule, and the HoS jumped on board. Again – that was a good thing – but just grates to see no credit given to the person who actually was responsible for the victory.

UPDATE: To clarify, the HoS has run a campaign for some time against name suppression for teachers. They also made a complaint to the Teachers Council about the Council’s own rules. So they are not Johnny come latelys on this issue. However I stand by my point that the editorial should have mentioned that the complaint to Parliament was someone else’s – as their news story did. At the end of the day it was the complaint to Parliament’s RRC which got the successful outcome.  I doubt the complaint to the Council directly was going to lead to any change.

It’s partly a cultural thing. Blogs habitually hat tip, link and credit others. Newspapers tend to do so far less often.