Dear Wiggo said:
"Regular contributor" not the same as "works for"? He does get paid for his contributions yeah?
And he wrote, " SKY’S THE LIMIT: British Cycling’s Quest to Conquer the Tour de France (HarperCollins, 2011)."
The point being: any chance he'd be vocally defensive of the people who pay his bills? Or the team by the same name? He has a page at sky sports dedicated to his "journalism".
Sigh.
Yes I'm sure he gets paid by Sky for the work he does for them.
But he is a freelance writer, who also gets work from other outlets. So he gets paid as a contractor. Being a self-employed contractor is not the same thing as working for a company in a number of very fundamental ways (sick leave, pension rights, tax regimes etc).
The most relevant of these differences, to this particular discussion, is that if Richard Moore did really want to take forward his threat of legal action against 'Digger', then as a self-employed free agent, this legal action would have nothing to do with Sky. A point I
think thehog (the person who made the suggestion and I queried) seems to have conceded by omission.
Now I may well be wrong about this. If I am could you explain how Sky would be involved in any prospective legal action between Richard Moore and Digger for Digger allegedly (in the mind of Moore at least) impugning Moore's professional reputation? Really, I'm all ears.
The point being: Moore is a freelance journalist who relies on his reputation for work. So someone accusing him of being dishonest is his work - if that accusation is untrue - could possibly effect his standing as a journalist, and in turn effect his earning power, and then in turn could leave the accuser open to some kind of slander/libel suit (if of course the accusation is untrue. . .). So his threat to sue Digger isn't an example of him being vocally defensive of the people who pay his bills, but an example of him being vocally defensive of
himself.
Please do try and keep up.