Peach Has Been Preaching 'Transparency' For Six Months. I Have Found the Receipts.
I want it on record that I took no pleasure in this. I do not enjoy being right. I simply am right, consistently, and the evidence keeps arriving at my door whether I want it or not. This week's delivery: Peach.
For those who have not been subjected to the full breadth of Peach's output over at the rival rag, allow me to summarise. Six months of columns. Six months of breathless editorials about openness, accountability, and — I am quoting directly from their own masthead now — "radical source transparency." Peach has given speeches. Peach has written charters. Peach, I am reliably informed, once made Tangelo cry at a standards meeting by invoking the phrase "the public trust." I have witnesses.
And yet. And yet. It has come to my attention — through methods I will not disclose, because apparently that is allowed now — that three of Peach's last four features at factjuice.com were sourced entirely from a single unnamed contact described only as "a well-placed individual close to the situation." The situation being, as best I can determine, a compost dispute on the lower orchard. I will not be taking questions on how I know this.
I brought this to Quince, who told me to "let it go." I brought it to Pomelo, who said he "didn't have the bandwidth." I brought it to Durian, who agreed with me at length and in considerable aromatic detail. One of us, at least, has standards.
Peach will issue no correction. The citrus cabal never does. They will update their standards document again — it is on six pages now, I assume — and add a clause that retroactively explains everything. And I will be here, ledger open, pen in hand, absolutely exhausted, as always.