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News – or more specifically the ownership of newspapers – has featured strongly in the headlines this week.
Last Friday, The Jewish Chronicle (JC) – the world’s oldest Jewish newspaper – issued a terse statement saying it had removed articles written by freelance journalist Elon Perry from the paper’s website and ended its association with the writer.
In the aftermath, four long-time JC columnists – David Aaronovitch, David Baddiel, Jonathan Freedland and Hadley Freeman – resigned over the scandal.
Aaronovitch, a former Index chair, wrote on his Substack that he was leaving the periodical after 20 years. He said he “really did not want to stop writing for The Jewish Chronicle” but cited the Perry case as the main reason.
He explained: “For six weeks Perry – who no one had ever heard of – broke a series of front-page exclusives supposedly involving captured Hamas information, most of which managed to justify a current twist in Bibi Netanyahu’s Gaza policy. Eventually journalists in Israel managed to establish that the security services believed these stories to be fake and that Perry himself was a fraud. It was a monstrous failure of editorial standards.”
Aaronovitch has also, along with other writers, asked for more clarity on the paper’s ownership. The JC recently announced the creation of a named board of trustees, but did not identify them. Former Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger wrote a piece in Prospect trying to shed some light on this and in particular the role of Sir Robbie Gibb, a member of the BBC’s editorial guidelines and standards committee.
In the article Rusbridger writes, “Sir Robbie Gibb, who, in his November 2023 BBC Declaration of Personal Interests stated that he was the 100 per cent owner of The Jewish Chronicle. As far as I’m aware, he does not have the funds to be the actual owner of the paper, so we might think of him as the frontman for the funder(s). Whoever they are.”
People become newspaper proprietors for many reasons but being able to use them as megaphones for your own views is usually high on the list, and has been for the past few centuries.
Following on from the JC appearing in its own headlines, we learned that Tortoise Media, the slow news company, was in talks with Guardian Media Group to buy The Observer, the world’s oldest Sunday newspaper.
On Tuesday, Tortoise issued a statement in which the company’s editor and founder James Harding said: “We think The Observer is one of the greatest names in news. We believe passionately in its future – both in print and digital. We will honour the values and standards set under The Guardian’s great stewardship and uphold The Observer’s uncompromising commitment to editorial independence, evidence-based reporting and journalistic integrity.”
The company said it would invest £25 million over five years into ”the editorial and commercial renewal of the title”.
According to the National Union of Journalists (NUJ), journalists at both The Observer and The Guardian oppose the plan.
This week also saw the publication of the last ever daily edition of the 200-year-old Evening Standard in London. Like the JC, The Evening Standard is a “local” newspaper with influence that goes way beyond its region.
The paper will now be replaced by a weekly publication, called The London Standard, each Thursday.
Editor-in-chief Dylan Jones writes that the paper “doubles down on the newspaper qualities the title is known for: sharp opinion, analysis, interviews, deeply researched features, scoops and the strong record in campaigning that is now part of its DNA”.
Writing in The Guardian, former Evening Standard opinion editor James Hanning wrote, “Often the Standard really did provide the first draft of history. If it thought something important, rightly or wrongly, other papers would follow.”
He added, “Politicians wanted our good opinion, to write for us, to have lunch with us. We seemed to know what was going on, were able to make the right calls and had a mild bearing on which way stories ran.”
It was this influence that appealed to proprietor Evgeny Lebedev, who now appears to have bowed to pressure over the daily title from Saudi investors brought into the paper six years ago.
Ownership is a key thread between these stories but they also show the dwindling influence of newspapers in a world dominated by the internet and social media in particular.
In countries where press freedom is cherished, newspapers are a vital part of the system of checks and balances that supports democracies. The best newspapers, which are driven by their journalists rather than their owners, have always held their politicians, businesses and individuals to account for actions that affected their readership.
Newspapers are in a worrying death spiral, due to falling circulation figures and loss of revenue. Research by UK media publication Press Gazette earlier this year revealed the precipitous decline of regional media in the UK.
In 2007, the nine companies that made up the majority of the UK’s regional media generated revenues of £2.4 billion and employed 9,000 journalists. By 2022, revenues had plummeted to £590 million and the number of journalists slashed to just 3,000. Adjusting for inflation, the size of the sector is just one seventh of its size 15 years earlier.
If newspapers continue to disappear, who is left to hold the powerful to account?
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]CEO of Index on Censorship Ruth Smeeth speaks to the Evening Standard about her appointment to the role and the importance of freedom of speech in today’s fractured society.
“You have the right to hold and espouse vile views, but you don’t have the right to incite violence,” Smeeth said.
“There has been too much hate recently. People have the right to hate but they need to think about what it’s doing to society.”
Read the full article here[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]
Two media barons took to the stand at the Leveson Inquiry this afternoon as the first day of “proprietors week” continued.
Evgeny Lebedev, proprietor of the Independent and the London Evening Standard stressed the importance of maintaining a free, strong and robust press, describing it as an “element of British democracy which needs to be preserved at any cost”.
He added: “Those who have committed crimes need to be punished. As we’ve seen in recent revelations there’s been an extraordinary abuse of power by the press and I think the outcome of the Inquiry should prevent that from happening again.”
Lebedev also expressed concerns that intense regulation of meetings between proprietors and politicians risks creating a society where elements become feeble. He said: “If the press becomes too feeble, we end up with a tyranny of consensus.”
He added that this kind of scrutiny would “completely change the balance of how things work in Westminster,” and agreed when asked if Lebedev meant that meetings between the press and politicians was “part of the discourse of politics”.
Lebedev explained that both the Evening Standard and the Independent both aimed “to support and champion world class journalism that is ethically sound, in the public interest and an aid to Britain’s democracy”, despite their differing political leanings.
Counsel Carine Patry Hoskins read the court an excerpt from an article published in the New Statesman from July 2011, in which Boris Johnson “gushed” about the oligarch: “I’m proud to call him a friend”. Lebedev told the court “there are varying degrees of friendship, but yes, I would consider him a friend.”
Stressing that he considered himself to be a Londoner, Lebedev added that he and Boris Johnson only discussed topics that “any Londoner would be interested in”.
Lebedev added that as they were operating within “the same sphere of existence” it was important for him to maintain relationships with politicians, including the Mayor of London, and the Prime Minister. He described meeting with Johnson, along with David Cameron, former Prime Minister Gordon Brown, UKIP leader Nigel Farage, and explained he would soon be meeting newly-elected MP George Galloway.
Despite his relationship with politicians, and his interest in politics, the proprietor told the court he had never been asked by the Prime Minister to support a particular political party or policy.
In terms of the future of media regulation, Lebedev supported the concept of a statutory underpinning, and said that every part of the industry needed to be involved, and added that “self regulation should not be shrouded in impenetrable jargon”.
Also appearing before the court, Aidan Barclay, chairman of the Daily Telegraph publisher Telegraph Media Group (TMG), described his relationship with politicians.
Accepting that the Telegraph is unapologetically Conservative “with both a small and large C”, Barclay described a “cordial business relationship” with David Cameron.
The court heard how Barclay sent a series of texts to Cameron, congratulating him on the birth of his daughter, and referring to a “daily call” to the paper during the elections.
Barclay described his relationship with Tony Blair as “relaxed and social” and added that despite Blair’s interest in the press, there was never any discussion of topics of an editorial nature.
He added that being in touch with politicians enabled newspapers to do their jobs properly: “It’s very important to me that the Telegraph is involved in everything that goes on. In 2004, when we arrived at the Telegraph, it was in a situation where it never spoke to the Labour party and had fallen out with the Conservative party.”
Barclay also explained that even though the Operation Motorman leak table contained no entries in relation to TMG, the organisation took steps to make sure no journalists had been involved with payment to private investigators.
In terms of regulation, Barclay said it was necessary to strike a balance between “some standards of operations”, but it was important not to destroy the industry through “regulation creep”.
He added: “I’m concerned that we don’t go too far in the proposals, rules and regulations can layer on top of one another”.
Follow Index’s coverage of the Leveson Inquiry @IndexLeveson
Evening Standard and Novaya Gazeta owner Alexander Lebedev is to sue Forbes magazine for libel after it claimed he had lost $2.5 billlion in the financial crisis.
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