Talk:Joe Haines (journalist)

Journalisted - External Links
Hi, On our (not-for-profit) site, www.journalisted.com, we’ve got more information about this journalist, with links to their articles and information on who’s blogging and commenting on them. We don’t want to get a conflict of interest note, so please feel free to add this link (http://www.journalisted.com/joe-haines) if you think it would be useful to other Wikipedians. Thanks! Journalisted Mert1651 (talk) 14:33, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

Freddie Mercury
Users keeps making a claim of homophobia against Joe Haines on the basis of a column by Haines which attacked Freddie Mercury just after he had died from AIDS. The source most recently added is a broken link, but a reprint of a tabloid source is insufficient to establish notability. See also Identifying reliable sources. The genuinely repulsive article itself is not enough, as conclusions drawn from the article are liable to considered original research, even the one which does look rather obvious. While there is some material online, mainly in articles referring to the Waterson song, there are no substantive account in an RS currently available. As this article is a WP:BLP, we need especially good citations to avoid anything potentially libellous. Philip Cross (talk) 17:35, 18 September 2016 (UTC)

See also WP:RIGHTGREATWRONGS. Philip Cross (talk) 10:51, 19 September 2016 (UTC)

I have forgotten how to edit, sign off etc, but the Daily Mirror piece (for which there are live links) is not the only evidence of Haines' homophobia - or something close enough to that to warrant a mention. In the New Statesman, 6 January 2016, Haines introduced a gratuitous reference to Tom Driberg MP, as follows: "Year after year, back in Harold Wilson’s time and beyond, the full members returned left-wing candidates to the National Executive, ranging from the dissolute Tom Driberg – whose publicly proclaimed left-leaning views blanketed the excesses in his private life – to “useful idiots” such as Ian Mikardo and Frank Allaun." (Driberg was openly gay notwithstanding that homosexual activity was against the law for most of his life.) If there is no objection I will relearn Wiki editing and amend the article. Kirker (talk) 23:40, 19 February 2017 (UTC)


 * No doubt Haines is homophobic, but the comments about Driberg are not entirely inaccurate. See the Wikipedia article and Francis Wheen's biography, although Driberg does not seem to have done anything in his sex life which would now be illegal, as I recall. So again, it is a matter of interpretation. Philip Cross (talk) 08:35, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

Encomium? That's not a word in everyday use. PatGallacher (talk) 00:05, 1 March 2019 (UTC)