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I was surprised he sent them to the RAF before they were published, especially given issues such as copyright and ownership.
Malcolm Speed quoted on David Clarke's website,
The Calvine photographs – MoD response to MP's questions, 23 October 2022.
it doesn't make much sense, and even his news editor [Malcolm Speed] was surprised by his [Andy Allan's] behavior. Why did he act this way?
Speed raises the issues of copyright and ownership, but makes a fundamental oversight of a type which might be surprising for a man in his position.
The Daily Record asked the claimed witnesses for the negatives at the request of the MoD, [
Edited to add: Er, I think]
and they complied.
It is reasonable to expect that the claimants knew that the negatives might be examined. There is presumed consent.
In trying to establish the authenticity of the images, the MoD/ RAF is not infringing copyright, as there is no intent to put copies of the images into general circulation or to seek financial/ commercial advantage from their temporary custody of the images.
The Daily Record has been approached by someone with an extraordinary claim and some photos. In turn it has contacted a press office of the RAF, which doesn't seem unreasonable to me, considering the content of the images.
If, for instance, someone in Pitlochry sent a newspaper a fuzzy picture of what appeared to be a large black cat-like creature and claimed it was a panther on the village green (or whatever), they shouldn't be surprised if that newspaper asked the local police for comment, or sought the opinion of a naturalist as to whether it
is a panther.
We don't know if news editor Malcolm Speed had line management superiority over picture editor Andy Allan; probably not as Speed didn't act to get the story published; and Speed told Clarke
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After that all discussions about the photos were discouraged.
Subordinates generally don't tell their line managers what aspect of work they can and can't talk about, so either Allan discouraged talk about the photos and was of equivalent grade to Speed, or someone senior to Speed discouraged further discussion (possibly the paper's editor, Endell Laird).
Speed opined to Clarke,
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Even if they were fakes I still find it hard to believe why they were not published. We published all sorts of images if they were newsworthy. These photos should have been a front page teaser and blasted over a spread inside for every day of the week.
This is Speed talking to Clarke some years after the event- Clarke doesn't say when; if it was in 2022 (the date of Clarke's article, link above) it was some 32 years after the Calvine UFO story at the
Record, and 16 years after Speed retired (probably- see below).
Although Clarke says Speed
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...admitted his paper had missed 'one of the biggest exclusives we ever had'
...as far as we know Speed didn't try to raise awareness about the Calvine UFO story himself, even after he left the Record.
And we (and Clarke) should remember that Speed claims he would have run the story even if the pictures were fake.
However, Speed clearly didn't have the authority to do that at the time.
Incidentally, Clarke says
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Malcolm Speed retired in 2015 after 40 years as a journalist working for the Mirror Group newspapers
Speed is on the committee of the Association of Mirror Pensioners,
https://www.mirrorpensioners.co.uk/committee/malcolm-speed/.
The Daily Record had been part of Mirror Group (and is now owned by Reach PLC which also owns the
Daily Mirror, Britain's most popular left-leaning tabloid). The Mirror Group had been owned by Robert Maxwell, businessman and fraudster, who stole from the company's pension fund;
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...arguably the biggest losers were the pensioners who had £460m looted from their fund.
"
Great frauds in history: Robert Maxwell", Matthew Partridge, 30 April 2019,
MoneyWeek website
...which is largely why there is an Association of Mirror Pensioners. Irrelevant trivia: Maxwell's daughter Ghislaine is currently imprisoned in the USA for procuring girls for Brian Epstein.
On the Association of Mirror Pensioner's website (link above), Malcolm Speed's bio (dated 16 September 2015) reads
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MALCOLM SPEED retired from the Daily Record in 2006 after more than 40 years' pensionable service. He had been news editor of the Record, managing editor of the SDR&SM...
Malcolm is 69...
So born c. 1946, retiring aged 60 after >40 year's work in 2006.
Clarke's account has Speed retiring aged 69 in 2015, possibly confusing Speed's retirement with the year that he became a committee member at AMP.
And maybe Speed, talking with Clarke, remembered the Calvine photos but didn't think about other newsworthy events happening at the same time: 2 days prior to the claimed Calvine event, Iraq had invaded Kuwait. A number of Britons (almost certainly including Scots) had been detained by the Iraqis: Passengers and aircrew from
British Airways flight 149 (Wikipedia) and members of a British Army training team working in Kuwait. Some were abused; all were used as hostages.
Perhaps the Editor of the
Daily Record didn't think it was a good time to run a frivolous story involving British forces or the MoD.