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Boris Johnson left journalism for politics because he felt guilty for “abusing or attacking people” without putting himself in their shoes, he told a group of schoolchildren on Tuesday.
“I was a journalist for a long time, I still am, I still write things,” he told students at Sedgehill Academy in south-east London. “But when you’re a journalist, it’s a great, great job, it’s a great profession, but the problem is that sometimes you find yourself always abusing or attacking people.”
He continued: “It is not that you want to abuse them or attack them, but you are being critical … maybe sometimes you feel a little guilty about that because you have not put yourself in the shoes of the person you are criticizing, and so on. I thought I’d give it a try. “
The prime minister’s press secretary, Allegra Stratton, said Johnson was referring to the work of reporters in holding the government to account, saying: “That’s the prime minister talking about the fact that you … as journalists do your job. it is constantly challenging and that is something that makes us all better in government. “
But others may reflect on Johnson’s record of writing derogatory terms about groups other than politicians without necessarily “putting himself in the shoes of the person he is criticizing.”
In a 2018 column for the Daily Telegraph, she wrote that women wearing burqas were choosing to “look like mailboxes” or “a bank robber.” In a 2002 column for the same newspaper, he described blacks as “piccaninnies” and referred to “watermelon smiles,” language for which he later apologized but claimed had been taken out of context. In a 1998 column, again for the Telegraph, he used the phrase “tank top bumboys” to describe gay men.
When he finally resigned from the column when he became foreign secretary, Johnson received £ 275,000 a year, about £ 4.80 a word.
Besides being a columnist for the Daily Telegraph, he was a reporter in Brussels for the same newspaper and editor of the Spectator. As a reporter, he had a reputation for presenting exaggerated, albeit colorful stories, and was famously fired from his first job at the Times after making up a quote and attributing it to his godfather.
Since changing professions, the prime minister is said to have sometimes been offended when faced with negative press. Columnist and former newspaper editor Sir Max Hastings wrote in 2019: “I have handwritten notes from our would-be next prime minister, threatening dire consequences if I continue to criticize.”
