There was a certain symmetry in the latest twist in the tale of the two British nurses freed by Saudi Arabia whose stories have been bought up controversially by two tabloid newspaper groups. The Saudi ambassador to London yesterday denied the nurses' allegations of brutality and sexual abuse during their interrogation and insisted that the gravest potential threat to diplomatic relations between two countries whose trade deals run into billions of pounds each year would come on the football field tonight when England play Saudi Arabia. Dr Ghazi Algosaibi was clearly seeking to make light of any diplomatic repercussions arising from the affair but he had an unwittingly-made point. Football has been the source of disputes between predominantly English newspapers and

foreign governments whose law enforcers have been automatically blamed for home-bred hooliganism.

Ex cathedra editorialising on the part of tabloids which seek to vilify Johnny Foreigner and his legal system on the back of scant, if any, evidence extends beyond drunken football fans. Think of Louise Woodward and her virtual sanctification above an evil United States legal system. Several newspapers, most notably those which paid six-figure sums for the stories of Lucille McLauchlan and Deborah Parry, have been outrageously quick to pass infallible judgment on their innocence. The Daily Record, one of the stable of papers serialising the former's story, went so far yesterday as to state that the Saudi royal family freed her because it believed her innocence, as did Mr Blair. That is arrant nonsense. Both nurses were freed, as were many other convicted prisoners, to celebrate Ramadan and after appeals by their families to the ruling Saudi dynasty. It was on the basis of clemency, nothing

else. The Saudi authorities still believe in their guilt. The ordeal they claim they endured is symptomatic of, at worst, a contempt for Western, non-Muslim women in that country. Guilt and innocence are another matter.

These are grey areas, particularly in the case of Lucille McLauchlan. There are many troubling aspects in her account of the events surrounding the murder of Yvonne Gifford and its aftermath. Yet such trifling matters are not allowed to get in the way of a good, circulation-boosting serialisation. The media generally has emerged further tainted from and by this latest feeding frenzy. The biggest critics of the papers which signed the nurses up are those which were outbid, pitched too late, or themselves recently paid for the serialisation of hugely controversial books. Hypocrisy is the word that springs to mind. Although we, too, buy book serialisations we do not pay for stories, an editorial stance which, paradoxically, attracted Brian MacKinnon to The Herald for the telling of his life story as Brandon Lee. This latest unseemly episode shows yet again that truth can be the first casualty

of circulation wars.