The Guardian website published George Monboit’s deleted Tweets revealing Lord McAlpine as the Newsnight paedophile suspect. Monbiot deleted the offending tweets and grovelled as soon as McAlpine declared he was going to sue the entire internet. However Guido can now reveal that they appeared on the Guardian website during the height of the Twitter witch-hunt at the beginning of the month and, as of 1300 Monday, are still there:
As many re-tweeters are about to find out, re-publication is just as serious as publication. Indeed, far more people will have seen this on the Guardian’s high-traffic pages than on Monbiot’s somewhat niche Twitter feed. The Guardian are not paying any of Monbiot’s legal fees as apparently he was publishing in a ‘personal capacity’. The liability here is direct…