It does suggest SW doesn’t understand the point of investigative journalism, though! CH said at the Observer event many of us attended online that, unusually, when she first discussed the story with her editor, her editor suggested she contact SW immediately, rather than later, presumably to see if there was a simple explanation for whatever her original source had flagged. It was SW”s one opportunity to shut down the story, but it’s not clear to me that there’s anything she could have said to stop it. ‘Winn is my maiden name and Raynor is a family name I’ve always preferred to my own, Moth is a nickname for Timothy, so neither of those things are mysterious, and I can send you documentation of his illness’?
I can’t remember what the issues CH’s original source flagged, though — did CH have the embezzlement on her radar from the start, or just the different names and Tim appearing to be perfectly well many years after a terminal diagnosis?
Because there’s no way of closing down the embezzlement story if CH had that from the start, but, if she didn’t, you’d think it wouldn’t have been hard to produce a few medical letters, even if the dates were later, and say, ‘I chose a more striking pen name, and referred to my husband by a nickname in my books, I’m not undercover!’ in such a way as to give the impression there’s not enough to be worth investigating.
I was listening to Marina Hyde talking about investigative journalism on TRIE last week, and how months and years of work, sometimes involving incurring expenses for freelancers, or going undercover inside an organisation, may not translate into a story at all.