Guardian editor Kath Viner described Hadley Freeman as a “fantastic colleague” last week, when it was announced that the writer was leaving the paper after 22 years to join the Sunday Times. Freeman herself spoke about how “lucky” she had been to have worked for so long at the paper. One insider tells Mandrake that is, to put it mildly, diplomatic language.
“Hadley felt unappreciated,” they explain. “Not commissioned enough. There are a lot of unhappy souls she is leaving in the wake of Suzanne Moore.”
Moore had got into difficulties at the Guardian, as Freeman had, on the issue of trans rights, where she felt she had “stepped outside the orthodoxy” in relation to others at the paper. Viner is, by all accounts, terrified of printing a single word that could be interpreted as being in any way critical of the cause.
