Commercial partners versus editorial independence

The tax-fraud scandal revelations concerning HSBC, for the Herald, is one of those rare stories that crosses departmental lines – it’s relevant for our local news and economy pages, arts and media team and our world news section.

In the UK this week, the bank’s wrongdoing has shifted gear, surprisingly taking a back seat to become the background noise in a full-out war in the British media, with the Daily Telegraph at the centre of an editorial storm.

After facing claims (from one of its own former employees) that it compromised its coverage of the banking giant’s malpractice, due to a blurring of lines between its advertising and editorial departments, the Telegraph published a leader article that read more like a toddler’s temper tantrum than a defence of the newspaper’s values.

Vowing it would take “no lectures about journalism” from its rivals, the newspaper criticized its peers for their “own, self-serving agendas,” before declaring that it had “no regard” for their “opinions.”

Those claims don’t exactly seem to hold up. In what was branded yesterday by other journalists as “despicable,” the Telegraph’s frontpage published a story that sought to link two tragic suicides to commercial and editorial pressures at News UK, the publisher of The Times and The Sun. It was published under a byline of “Daily Telegraph Reporter,” and sources inside the newspaper say it was written under the instruction of the paper’s superiors.

After facing claims that it compromised its coverage of the banking giant’s malpractice… the Telegraph published a leader article that read more like a toddler’s temper tantrum than a defence of the newspaper’s values.

Editorial practices and decisions are always difficult and complicated, whatever the newspaper, whatever the newsroom. But such choices should not be subjected to undue interference, or be part of an approach to attack rivals as a consequence of criticism. Commercial pressure on newspapers is fierce, but newspapers must remain responsible to their readers first and foremost, not their advertisers.

@urlgoeshere

An edited version of this column was published in the Buenos Aires Herald, on Sunday, February 22, 2015 as part of the ‘Perceptions’ series.

Link: http://www.buenosairesherald.com/article/182592/telegraphing-commercial-pressures.