EditorialEditorial

We are all brought and paid for to a degree, I suppose.

This article titled “The Guardian view on journalism and advertising: selling the news short” was written by Editorial, for The Guardian on Friday 20th February 2015 18.57 UTC

For 160 years the Daily Telegraph has been as integral a part of British life as the long shadows on cricket grounds, warm beer and cycling to evensong that John Major once invoked, while paraphrasing George Orwell. You may not have shared the paper’s politics, but it was widely respected for straight, accurate news reporting of the sort that is essential to any healthy democracy.

This week the paper’s integrity suffered something of a body blow when its highly respected former chief political commentator, Peter Oborne, published a devastating attack on the newspaper’s ethical standards. Mr Oborne detailed a pattern of behaviour in which, he said, stories had been suppressed, removed, downplayed, boosted or discouraged in order not to offend – or, alternately to please – advertisers and/or financial institutions. His decision to go public with his allegations was sparked by the minimal coverage devoted to last week’s revelations – widely reported in the UK and round the world – about HSBC’s part in creating and encouraging tax evasion mechanisms. Mr Oborne believes the story was downplayed because the company’s chief executive, Murdoch MacLennan, was anxious not to lose advertising revenue from the bank. This is a serious accusation, since Mr MacLennan told the Leveson inquiry on oath that neither he nor the paper’s owners played any part in editorial decisions.

If Mr Oborne’s claims are right, he is justified in saying that the HSBC coverage, or lack of it, amounts to a fraud on Telegraph readers. A number of senior executives and former editorial staff at the newspaper have, albeit anonymously, endorsed Mr Oborne’s general critique. The paper, normally an advocate of transparency, has so far declined to answer any detailed questions about Mr Oborne’s article. A long, dishonest and callow editorial on Friday almost comically attempted to shift the blame onto the BBC and the Guardian. You would never guess that the criticism – unreported in the Telegraph – actually came from neither of these sources, but from their own much-celebrated former colleague, who until recently was writing editorials.

Many news organisations, old and new, rely on advertising. Indeed, the noted historian of British newspapers, Francis Williams, described in his 1958 book, Dangerous Estate, how the daily press “would never have come into existence as a force in public and social life if it had not been for the need of men of commerce to advertise. Only through the growth of advertising did the press achieve independence”. But the reverse can also be true – as evidenced by widespread and dismal practices in the Indian press in which editorial coverage is routinely bought, and newspapers invest in companies about which they write.

The Telegraph, as a privately owned newspaper, is not obliged to respond to questions about its editorial standards. If it wants to put up shutters and throw mud at rivals, it’s perfectly entitled to do so. But, the longer it remains silent, the more its readers may draw their own conclusions about the integrity of a great British institution.

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