Bad Press Awards

Mic Wright

Recognising the Worst of the Worst of British Journalism

The Enamel Egg Cup
of Exploitation

You might assume that a supermarket worker being sacked for tackling a shoplifter would be a story for a local paper or a regional TV news programme. No! You’re thinking too small. 

For a national newspaper columnist, it’s an opportunity to turn one incident into a data point in a larger trend; one man into an avatar for all that is going wrong in ‘Broken Britain’. 

The recent tale of Walker Smith, let go from Waitrose after he tussled with a shoplifter who’d filled a bag with Lindt chocolate bunnies, was catnip to columnists. 

Here was a good man done wrong by a corporation that couldn’t be bothered to fight the scourge of shoplifting. The details – including that the supermarket had previously warned Smith not to put himself in danger by deputising himself to take down thieves – didn’t matter. It was the principle of the thing.