opinion


Denis MacShane asks if the paper will shift in attitude, including towards Europe


Where now for the Telegraph?


T


he takeover of The Daily Telegraph by the German media giant Axel Springer is the most important


foreign change in the ownership of the British press since Rupert Murdoch bought The Sun and The Sunday Times and turned both into cheerleaders for a Thatcherite world view. The Daily Telegraph under the editorship of Sir Max Hastings in the 1990s handed editorial comment on Europe over to Boris Johnson, a fluent writer but indifferent to facts as he portrayed the European Union as a monstrous federal super-state whose prime purpose was to crush Britain. The Telegraph, however, is not just


any old national broadsheet. It was, for more than a century, the bible of the Conservative-voting half. Under different owners and editors, the paper had a rough-and-ready rule of professional, well-researched news reporting that met the traditional deontological obligations of quality journalism based on factual accuracy, giving both or more sides in a story and avoiding the lurid sensationalism and contempt for truth of tabloids such as the Daily Mail or The Sun. When I worked as a journalist in the


1970s for the BBC Radio 4 news bulletins or the BBC World Service, The Daily Telegraph was the paper that most BBC journalists turned to first – not for its opinions but because its news reporting could be trusted. However, when the Citizen Kane figure of Canadian newspaper proprietor Conrad Black bought The Daily Telegraph, his strongly held right-wing views in support of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan started to permeate it. Then two brothers living in tax exile


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in the Channel Islands bought the paper. They had made their fortune in financial speculation and objected to the EU’s timid efforts to bring transparency and some sense of responsibility to the capitalism unleashed in the 1980s as the communist world collapsed in on itself and most centre-left or liberal parties just joined in the generalised worship of the free market. The Telegraph’s new owners had a profound dislike of the European Union as a supra-national regulatory body and mocked its meek efforts to promote social partnership. Now the Daily Telegraph has been


bought by pan-European publishing empire Axel Springer. The new boss, Mathias Döpfner, is fluent in English and was a close friend of the late George Weidenfeld, the Austrian emigré publisher who promoted cooperation and contacts between London, Paris and Berlin.


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The publisher’s principles include support for a united Europe and the social market economy (in which unions are partners) and opposition to political extremism


Springer publishes both a Sun-type tabloid, Bild, and the worthy, balanced daily Die Welt. The publisher has a list of principles – support for the transatlantic alliance, the state of Israel, a united Europe and the social market economy (in which unions are seen as partners not enemies) and opposition to political extremism. In Britain, political extremism has been actualised this century with the drive by The Daily Telegraph, the Murdoch papers, the Daily Mail and the Europhobe Tories, who all promoted Britain leaving the EU. Daily Telegraph editors are unhappy if there is not a story every day sneering at Europe. But Britain since Brexit has slipped to 15th in rank among European nations in terms of GDP per capita and Labour walks in fear of pointing out how Brexit is impoverishing Britain. Polls all show a majority of British


people think their 2016 populist plebiscite vote was an error. But no one in government or in the Tory-Reform opposition dare admit this truth. So the question is: will the new


owners of the Daily Telegraph allow it to run comment and news stories that are propaganda for Brexit isolationism or will it start reporting about the damage the Brexit experiment has done to Britain and the need for Britain to once again be a leading nation in Europe – in line with the decades-long principles of its new owners and publishers?


Denis MacShane is a former UK minister for Europe and a former president of the NUJ


TELEGRAPH MEDIA GROUP


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