The Daily Telegraph’s chief political commentator has resigned and launched a blistering attack on the paper’s management and owners over its lack of coverage of the HSBC tax story, which he described as a “fraud on its readers”.
Peter Oborne, associate editor of the Spectator and a familiar face on Channel 4 Dispatches documentaries, claimed the paper deliberately suppressed stories about the banking giant, including last week’s revelations that its Swiss subsidiary helped wealthy customers dodge taxes and conceal millions of dollars in assets, in order to keep its valuable advertising account.
He said it was a “most sinister development” at the broadsheet title, which he described as “the most important conservative-leaning newspaper in Britain”, but where he alleged the traditional distinction between the advertising and editorial departments had collapsed.
Oborne claimed it was a pattern that could be seen elsewhere in the paper’s reporting, including its coverage of last year’s protests in Hong Kong.
Oborne said the Telegraph’s coverage of HSBC, by putting the interests of a major international bank above its duty to report the news, was a “form of fraud on its readers”.
“There are great issues here. They go to the heart of our democracy, and can no longer be ignored,” he said in an article on the open Democracy website.
Oborne said the paper had discouraged stories critical of HSBC since the start of 2013, when the bank suspended its advertising with the paper following a Telegraph investigation into accounts held with HSBC in Jersey. He said one former Telegraph executive told him HSBC was “the advertiser you literally cannot afford to offend”.
A later joint investigation into HSBC by the Guardian, the BBC, Le Monde and other media outlets revealed earlier this month that its Swiss banking arm had helped wealthy customers dodge taxes and conceal millions of dollars of assets, doling out bundles of untraceable cash and advising clients on how to circumvent domestic tax authorities.
Before the latest HSBC revelations were published, and while discussions were continuing over the material, the bank put its advertising with the Guardian’s parent company, Guardian News and Media, “on pause”.
HSBC – the advertiser you literally cannot afford to offend
Telegraph executive
Oborne said he had told Murdoch MacLennan, the chief executive of the paper’s parent company, the Telegraph Media Group, that he was resigning in December last year. He said he had intended to leave quietly, but had a “duty to make all this public” following the Telegraph’s HSBC coverage, which “needed a microscope to find”.
“The Telegraph’s recent coverage of HSBC amounts to a form of fraud on its readers,” he said. “It has been placing what it perceives to be the interests of a major international bank above its duty to bring the news to Telegraph readers. There is only one word to describe this situation: terrible.”
A Telegraph spokesperson said: “Like any other business, we never comment on individual commercial relationships, but our policy is absolutely clear.
“We aim to provide all our commercial partners with a range of advertising solutions, but the distinction between advertising and our award-winning editorial operation has always been fundamental to our business. We utterly refute any allegation to the contrary. It is a matter of huge regret that Peter Oborne, for nearly five years a contributor to the Telegraph, should have launched such an astonishing and unfounded attack, full of inaccuracy and innuendo, on his own paper.”
Oborne, who joined the Telegraph from the Daily Mail five years ago, accused it of a “collapse in standards” under its owners, the Barclay brothers, the reclusive multi-millionaire owners of the Ritz hotel, who bought it in 2004.
Source: The Guardian