Peter Oborne: Why I have resigned from the Telegraph

[T_i_B]

A rather damming statement about the way that the British media is going. Worth clicking on the link and reading the whole article in it's entirety.

https://www.opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom/peter-oborne/why-i-have-resigned-from-telegraph

With the collapse in standards has come a most sinister development. It has long been axiomatic in quality British journalism that the advertising department and editorial should be kept rigorously apart. There is a great deal of evidence that, at the Telegraph, this distinction has collapsed.

Late last year I set to work on a story about the international banking giant HSBC. Well-known British Muslims had received letters out of the blue from HSBC informing them that their accounts had been closed. No reason was given, and it was made plain that there was no possibility of appeal. "It’s like having your water cut off," one victim told me.

When I submitted it for publication on the Telegraph website, I was at first told there would be no problem. When it was not published I made enquiries. I was fobbed off with excuses, then told there was a legal problem. When I asked the legal department, the lawyers were unaware of any difficulty. When I pushed the point, an executive took me aside and said that "there is a bit of an issue" with HSBC. Eventually I gave up in despair and offered the article to openDemocracy. It can be read here.

I researched the newspaper’s coverage of HSBC. I learnt that Harry Wilson, the admirable banking correspondent of the Telegraph, had published an online story about HSBC based on a report from a Hong Kong analyst who had claimed there was a ‘black hole’ in the HSBC accounts. This story was swiftly removed from the Telegraph website, even though there were no legal problems. When I asked HSBC whether the bank had complained about Wilson's article, or played any role in the decision to remove it, the bank declined to comment. Mr Wilson’s contemporaneous tweets referring to the story can be found here. The story itself, however, is no longer available on the website, as anybody trying to follow through the link can discover. Mr Wilson rather bravely raised this issue publicly at the ‘town hall meeting’ when Jason Seiken introduced himself to staff. He has since left the paper.

[jakeXT]

1. True "But no newspaper in history has ever given an unfavourable gloss on its owner’s accounts"

I have since consulted Charles Moore, the last editor of the Telegraph before the Barclays bought the paper in 2004. Mr Moore confessed that the published accounts of Hollinger Inc, then the holding company for the Telegraph, did not receive the scrutiny they deserved. But no newspaper in history has ever given an unfavourable gloss on its owner’s accounts. Beyond that, Mr Moore told me, there had been no advertising influence on the paper’s news coverage.

There is a purpose to journalism, and it is not just to entertain. It is not to pander to political power, big corporations and rich men. Newspapers have what amounts in the end to a constitutional duty to tell their readers the truth.

There is a problem with " a constitution" in the UK, a D-Notice for example comes to my mind

A DA-Notice or Defence Advisory Notice (called a Defence Notice or D-Notice until 1993) is an official request to news editors not to publish or broadcast items on specified subjects for reasons of national security. The system is still in use in the United Kingdom.

...
In June 2013 a DA-Notice was issued asking the media to refrain from running further stories related to the US PRISM programme, and British involvement therein.[11] On 28 October that same year, the topic arose in Parliament, when the Prime Minister made a statement to threaten by judicial means to restrain publication of any further Snowden stories in the Guardian (or by extension, other media).[12]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DA-Notice

[dixiegrrrrl]

2. Off to the greatest page..people need to see this.

Rec.

[T_i_B]

3. Torygraph has falen off the deep end in the wake of Osborne's resignation

Firstly an idiotic editorial defending their actions, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/telegraph-view/11423912/The-Telegraphs-promise-to-our-readers.html

Then this rather desperate story attacking the Times http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/media/11426319/Times-publisher-News-UK-launches-internal-investigation-after-suicides-of-two-members-of-its-commercial-staff.html

http://www.buzzfeed.com/jimwaterson/daily-telegraph-anonymous-report

A senior Daily Telegraph reporter wrote an anonymous front page story suggesting suicides at a rival newspaper may be connected to stress caused by commercial pressure – just days after the Telegraph itself faced allegations of blurring the lines between advertising and editorial.

The article, which was printed on the newspaper’s front page under an anonymous “Telegraph Reporter” by-line, claimed advertising sales staff at the publisher of The Times have been driven to suicide by an “unreasonable pressure to hit targets”.

The decision to publish the story connecting deaths to editorial standards was branded as “despicable” by senior journalists on other publications, who suggested the story was an attempt to distract from the Telegraph’s own editorial concerns.

BuzzFeed News is aware of the name of the individual journalist who wrote the piece but has at this stage chosen not to publish it. Several Telegraph journalists claimed the individual involved may have been put under pressure to produce the article by the newspaper’s executives.