John Witherow is a British newspaper editor, currently with The Times. A former journalist with Reuters, he joined News International in 1980 and was appointed editor of The Sunday Times in 1994 and editor of The Times in 2013.
Witherow started his career working for the BBC World Service in Namibia. After university, Witherow was taken on by Reuters news agency in 1977 as a trainee and sent to the Cardiff School of Journalism. He then moved to Reuters, working in London and Madrid before joining The Times as a reporter in 1980. At The Times, he covered the Iran–Iraq and Falklands wars. In 1982, Witherow was sent on the aircraft carrierInvincible to cover the Falklands War. After the fall of Port Stanley in June, 1982, he returned to the UK on a Hercules plane with the SAS. He wrote a book, The Winter War, The Falklands, with Patrick Bishop, a war correspondent for The Observer newspaper. Witherow moved to The Sunday Times in 1983 under the editorship of Andrew Neil. There he served in several positions, including Defence Editor, Diplomatic Editor, Foreign Editor and Head of News. Witherow was made Acting Editor after the departure of Neil in 1994. He was confirmed in the job the following year. In early 2013, Witherow was made Editor of The Times in succession to James Harding. The Times independent directors confirmed the appointment in September of that year and The Times won Newspaper of the Year for 2014 in the Press Awards.
Controversies
Early in Witherow's editorship at The Sunday Times the paper published false claims that Labour politician Michael Foot was a KGB agent. The paper reached a settlement with Foot over the claim. In 2010, Witherow sought to defend the critic A. A. Gill after he called Clare Balding a "dyke on a bike" in a TV review. Replying to a letter of complaint from Balding, Witherow wrote, "In my view some members of the gay community need to stop regarding themselves as having a special victim status and behave like any other sensible group that is accepted by society. Not having a privileged status means, of course, one must accept occasionally being the butt of jokes. A person's sexuality should not give them a protected status." Balding complained to the Press Complaints Commission and the complaint was upheld. While working as editor at The Times, Witherow received a letter from leading UK scientists, including Lord Krebs and Lord Stern, which criticized an article for being based on a method that "involves ignoring everything that science has discovered about atmospheric physics since the discovery of greenhouse warming by John Tyndall more than 150 years ago" while adding, "On social media it has, literally, been a laughing stock." The letter went on to argue that this article was not an isolated example as it added to a series of articles that appeared to be designed to undermine climate science and consequent emission reduction programs. In 2016, as editor of The Times, Witherow failed to cover the Hillsborough stadium disaster inquest verdict on its front page. He later admitted this had been a mistake, however, The Times' football correspondent, Tony Barrett, resigned in protest at the paper's apparent failure.
Personal life
Witherow has three children from his former marriage to Sarah Linton.
