Newspapers are institutionalised hypocrisy. They excoriate yet they cringe. They speak truth to power and then sup at its table. They stick their moral noses in the air while their bottoms rest on festering heaps of deals, perks, bribes and ads, without which they would not exist. The most amazing thing is that this murky edifice has delivered Britain a remarkably robust and free-spirited press.
A commentator on the Daily Telegraph, Peter Oborne, broke cover this week with a searing indictment of his paper’s evident reluctance to cover the HSBC tax evasion saga.
Newspapers tend to downplay the scoops of others, as many did the Guardian’s WikiLeaks and Snowden revelations of 2011 and 2013. But a big story trumps such rivalry, as the Telegraph found to its advantage with its MPs’ expenses exposé in 2009.
Oborne’s charge – denied by the Telegraph – is that the newspaper was soft on the story not out of rivalry, nor even to its owners’ residency in a Channel Island tax haven, but from a fear of losing advertising revenue.
Related: Telegraph's Peter Oborne resigns, saying HSBC coverage a 'fraud on readers'
HSBC had stopped advertising in the Telegraph in 2012 over a similar story to the Guardian’s, about tax evasion in Jersey, and the management was frantic to see revenues restored. In other words, HSBC was not just illegal and unethical but also a bully. The Guardian also recently had its HSBC ads “paused”, but declined to yield. That HSBC was chaired by an Anglican priest who took the government shilling as an ennobled minister merely illustrates the many-splendoured architecture of the British establishment.
An American newspaper is said to have carried the ironic motto “As independent as resources permit”. Any student of the press knows what this means. A business page protocol ordains gentle treatment of proprietorial interests. Fashion pages would not exist without kickbacks, or travel pages without “contra” deals on hospitality and mentions. I remember perfume firms threatening to withdraw ads after stories on animal cruelty.
There is no question standards are slipping. Page layouts are “bastardised” by wraparounds. Ill-shapen ads jut into editorial space, a once unthinkable concession to ad managers. I cringe when I see “sponsored content” supplements full of “advertorial”. I gather some titles now actively seek corporate sponsorship for columnists.
Rupert Murdoch was robust in backing investigative reporting at Times Newspapers, especially on the Sunday Times. He did so to a fault in the case of the phone-hacking News of the World. But his Times undoubtedly restrained its China coverage when he was struggling for a media deal with Beijing.
Even the Guardian cannot be regarded as immune from such pressures. In March 2007 Labour’s short-lived Pathfinder scheme, involving dire housing demolitions in the north, was inexplicably eulogised in a Guardian supplement in return for an undisclosed payment from the government. Today its “branded content partner zone” is occupied by Unilever, “whose sources of revenue allow us to explore, in more depth than editorial budgets would otherwise allow, topics that we hope are of interest”. Hence this week’s frothy promotion, under the Guardian masthead, of a “green sex sustainable” condom – though it’s also fair to point out that the Guardian columnist George Monbiot launched a withering attack on the partnership in these pages.
Any loss-making journal is at the mercy of its paymasters, be they the state, commerce, philanthropy or individuals
I have never come across anything as serious as Oborne’s accusations against the Telegraph and its “creative advertising solutions”. But financial necessity has become the mother of ethical invention, or at least corner-cutting. Any loss-making journal is at the mercy of its paymasters, be they the state, commerce, philanthropy or individuals.
The worst newspapers are run by governments, be they the organs of authoritarian regimes or the limp newssheets issued by local councils following the collapse of a local press (aided by the BBC’s local radio). But if state ownership is journalistically barren, private ownership is a mess. It is a market dominated less by money than by power, influence and glamour.
Most serious publications have for half a century depended on subsidy, which leaves them at the mercy of their boards and benefactors. The Independent struggles under the generosity of an oligarch. The Times depends on some rich man craving its ownership. The Telegraph survives through staff cuts and deals with advertisers. The Guardian’s security has been bought at the expense of years of closures and job losses at its media subsidiaries.
The best guarantor of editorial integrity remains an organisation stable enough to protect its staff and their work from the tempests of the marketplace – including advertisers.
Many such organisations exist. I don’t share the media commentator Clay Shirky’s forecast of an industry “going bankrupt gradually then suddenly”. Nor do I see the digital media, as does Andrew Keen, as a hell of virals, angries, trolls, click farms and “abrasive young men with personality defects … in which trust is the greatest casualty”.
Newspapers and broadcasters still have the resources and skills to digest, process and transmit masses of information in such a way as to hold the faith of readers. That is a vital democratic construct.
Related: Peter Oborne may be a maverick but his Telegraph revelations are dynamite
Oborne is a maverick. His works embrace such themes as The Rise of Political Lying, the Collapse of Public Standards and the achievements of Alastair Campbell. His veins run with the blood of scepticism. As such he is a corrective to any complacency on the part of what he derides as today’s “client journalists”. They are reporters who play safe, averting their eyes from such establishment outrages as the sale of peerages, corruption of politics by lobbyists, and appeasement of non-doms and tax evaders. Oborne has extended his charge sheet to venal advertisers.
There is no question that the private sector is an insecure way of financing a free press that does not make money. But all other ways are worse. There are still as many daily newspapers published in Britain (nine) as there were 50 years ago, a continuous diversity available to no other western country. Online has not wiped out print. It has enhanced the penetration and prominence of both.
In which case, we can only thank goodness for expediency. The only champion of a free press is not some regulator or commission or charter board. It is the free press itself. Plurality, rivalry, disclosure, exposure and sometimes fury are the best guardians. That is what we saw this week. One Oborne is worth 10 Levesons.