By David Ferguson

One of Britain's top journalists has created a storm of anger with a tasteless reference to this week's Air France disaster, and then compounded the error by offering an 'apology’'via the social chat site 'Twitter'. 

Polly Toynbee is one of Britain's top political commentators, writing for The Guardian, the Labour Party's most loyal media supporter. Toynbee was formerly one of Prime Minister Gordon Brown's most vocal cheerleaders, although in the last two weeks she has turned on the Prime Minister, demanding that his cabinet colleagues join her in a plot to oust him from power.

But common sense seems to have deserted both The Guardian and Ms Toynbee on Thursday. In a column entitled The Half-Dead Prime Minister that again called for the Labour Party to force Brown's resignation, she started with the words:

"Another engine breaks away from Gordon Brown's fuselage, and the damage done looks set to bring him crashing out of the sky. Even if he can judder on, the injury done will diminish him further. Which other engines may now break away too?"

The clumsy and insensitive reference to this week's Air France disaster was unambiguous. Flight 447 from Rio de Janeiro to Paris crashed over the Atlantic Ocean on Monday, with the loss of all 228 people on board. Nine Chinese were among the victims of the crash, as were a number of children. Overall, nationals from over thirty countries were involved.

Ms Toynbee's column drew an immediate furious reaction from Guardian readers, who voiced their anger in comments posted on the newspaper's website.

"That opening paragraph is the most tasteless piece of journalism I've seen in years…" said 'seancarless'. "What an insult to all those families grieving for loved ones…" said 'ShamelessWords'. "Does anyone actually edit The Guardian for taste at all?" asked ‘qwerty99666'.

In a desperate damage limitation exercise, the website moderators began to delete postings criticizing Ms Toynbee. But they found it hard to keep pace. The article was originally published on the website at 23.30 on Thursday, UK time. By 14.00 on Friday, of over four hundred comments posted almost thirty had been deleted, but there were still more than fifty on the site criticizing the article. Many of them had collected hundreds of 'recommends' from fellow readers.

At 9.37 on Friday morning Readers' Editor Mark Seaton was forced to come onto the blog to offer an apology: "As many users have observed, the plane crash metaphor in the first paragraph has an unfortunate ring," he wrote. "Sorry Polly hasn't been here herself, but she has twittered an apology…"

If anything, even greater anger was caused by the suggestion that an apology 'twittered' via the well-known social chat site should be considered an appropriate way to deal with the matter.

"Ms Toynbee is a very busy and important person, far too grand to waste 30 seconds of her time coming on to her own thread to apologise in person," said one sarcastic comment, later deleted.

"If Polly Toynbee wanted to apologise for her crude, tasteless comparison Twitter (whatever that may be - I thought only dim teenagers used it) is not the place," said WorriedBlueEyes.

A third poster was blunt and to the point: "The woman should be sacked. Then she can have more time to twitter." This comment was also deleted.

At noon Mr Seaton was forced to come onto the blog to post a second apology, but there was still no sign of the author of the piece.

A final reminder to Ms Toynbee that stories covered by journalists involve and affect real people came from a poster called Dendros: "I couldn't concentrate on the article after her extremely unimaginative and tasteless airline comparison. I knew one of the three Irish doctors who died on the flight."

(China.org.cn June 6, 2009)