Richard Desmond defended his newspapers’ reporting of Madeleine McCann’s disappearance in a BBC interview as “fair”, despite having to pay more than £500,000 to settle defamation claims concerning the coverage.
In an extraordinary interview on BBC Radio 4’s Media Show on Wednesday, in which he also said he had no regrets aligning his media empire with Ukip, Desmond was asked if he regretted the way Gerry and Kate McCann were treated by his publications following the disappearance of their daughter in 2007.
“Do I regret [it]? No, I think we reported it very fairly,” he said. “The McCanns had a PR company that wanted [them] to be on [the] front page. They wanted to be on the front page, to keep the story live.”
Desmond, who also took umbrage at the description of his adult TV channels and former magazines as pornographic in the interview, defended the 100-plus articles that appeared in his Express and Star titles about the missing child.
In March 2008, Desmond’s Northern & Shell paid out £550,000 to settle defamation claims over more than 100 different articles and published a front-page apology in all his newspapers.
Desmond also said in the interview that he has no regrets about personally donating £1.3m to Ukip.
“Thank God I did that; supported Ukip,” he said. “Thank God the Daily Express listened to its readers. The readers are fed up with being controlled by Brussels, we are fed up with uncontrolled immigration. We like immigration, but uncontrolled immigration cannot carry on.
“And I’m delighted that there’ll be an European Union referendum. When we hear how David Cameron negotiates we will make our minds up.”
Desmond also said he has no problem with talking about his past as a proprietor of adult magazines, and being the current owner of adult TV stations Fantasy Channel and Red Hot, he simply did not want them referred to as pornographic.
“I’m very happy to talk about Penthouse,” he said. “I’m very happy to talk about the magazines that we published, which we sold 12 years ago. What I don’t like is the other word. For me that word I think of Paul Raymond, I think of drugs, I think of prostitution, I think of David Sullivan … stuff which is pornography. For me, I’m a media group.”
“Most media groups, including the BBC, do work in some way with adult material,” he said. “Ofcom were delighted we bought Channel 5 as we have a good rapport with them. Our adult channels are carried on Sky, Virgin, carried on Freeview, which I believe is owned by the BBC, carried on YouView.”