[El Car]

The first I've come across a union - and I was a rep for a number of years - actively supporting its members' right to lie and endanger the business they work for in full knowledge that the member is unable to substantiate his claims.

This is exactly the problem with the NUJ. As part of the apology and explanation issued by the Herald they said that Spiers had admitted what he said wasn't true, and yet Haggerty (and let's not forget she has a demonstrable anti-Rangers agenda and is an associate and supporter of a prominently known sectarian bigot blogger) still protested about the retraction, and all this despite knowing that persisting with the lie was likely to land her employer in legal trouble. In other words she wanted the paper to deliberately pursue a defamatory lie even after acknowledging that it was a lie. In all honesty I can't think of any situation where an employer would find it acceptable for any employee to intentionally seek to legally damage them in order to pursue a personal agenda, and in a world where it's practically impossible to get sacked it's one of the few situations that would practically guarantee termination of employment.

And yet the NUJ thinks the Herald was wrong in this?? The Herald wasn't "unwilling to stand up for its contributors", it was protecting itself from a suicide bomber.