Punch Newspaper Threatens To Sue Vanguard, ThisDay

A battle of the media houses has begun as The Punch newspaper has served a pre-action notice on contemporaries, Vanguard, The Sun and ThisDay.

The bone of contention is a series of fake advertorials, purporting to be on the cover of Punch, which were published by the offending newspapers.

It was discovered that the adverts were created by a group known as “Agents for Collective Transparency” which is against President Goodluck Jonathan.

The group manipulated the anti-Jonathan ads to make them look like they were on the cover of The Punch and subsequently gave them to the 3 affected newspapers who published them.

The Punch has stated that the advertorials have a negative impact on its reputation and it is giving the erring newspapers a period of 5 days to either issue a public apology, which would also be published in their respective papers, or face litigation.

There has been no reaction from any of the affected newspapers.