Why I have resigned from the Telegraph

PETER OBORNE 17 February 2015

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The coverage of HSBC in Britain's Telegraph is a fraud on its readers. If major newspapers allow
corporations to influence their content for fear of losing advertising revenue, democracy itself is
in peril.


Five years ago I was invited to become the chief political commentator of the Telegraph. It was a
job I was very proud to accept. The Telegraph has long been the most important conservative-leaning
newspaper in Britain, admired as much for its integrity as for its superb news coverage. When I
joined the Telegraph had just broken the MPs’ expenses scandal, the most important political scoop
of the 21st century.

I was very conscious that I was joining a formidable tradition of political commentary. I spent my
summer holiday before taking up my duties as columnist reading the essays of the great Peter Utley,
edited by Charles Moore and Simon Heffer, two other masters of the art.

No one has ever expressed quite as well as Utley the quiet decency and pragmatism of British
conservatism. The Mail is raucous and populist, while the Times is proud to swing with the wind as
the voice of the official class. The Telegraph stood in a different tradition. It is read by the
nation as a whole, not just by the City and Westminster. It is confident of its own values. It has
long been famous for the accuracy of its news reporting. I imagine its readers to be country
solicitors, struggling small businessmen, harassed second secretaries in foreign embassies,
schoolteachers, military folk, farmers—decent people with a stake in the country.

My grandfather, Lt Col Tom Oborne DSO, had been a Telegraph reader. He was also a churchwarden and
played a role in the Petersfield Conservative Association. He had a special rack on the breakfast
table and would read the paper carefully over his bacon and eggs, devoting special attention to the
leaders. I often thought about my grandfather when I wrote my Telegraph columns.

‘You don’t know what you are fucking talking about’

Circulation was falling fast when I joined the paper in September 2010, and I suspect this panicked
the owners. Waves of sackings started, and the management made it plain that it believed the future
of the British press to be digital. Murdoch MacLennan, the chief executive, invited me to lunch at
the Goring Hotel near Buckingham Palace, where Telegraph executives like to do their business. I
urged him not to take the newspaper itself for granted, pointing out that it still had a very
healthy circulation of more than half a million. I added that our readers were loyal, that the
paper was still very profitable and that the owners had no right to destroy it.

The sackings continued. A little while later I met Mr MacLennan by chance in the queue of mourners
outside Margaret Thatcher’s funeral and once again urged him not to take Telegraph readers for
granted. He replied: “You don’t know what you are fucking talking about.”

Events at the Telegraph became more and more dismaying. In January 2014 the editor, Tony Gallagher,
was fired. He had been an excellent editor, well respected by staff. Mr Gallagher was replaced by
an American called Jason Seiken, who took up a position called ‘Head of Content.’ In the 81 years
between 1923 and 2004 the Telegraph had six editors, all of them towering figures: Arthur Watson,
Colin Coote, Maurice Green, Bill Deedes, Max Hastings and Charles Moore. Since the Barclay Brothers
purchased the paper 11 years ago there have been roughly six more, though it is hard to be certain
since with the arrival of Mr Seiken the title of editor was abolished, then replaced by a Head of
Content (Monday to Friday). There were three editors (or Heads of Content) in 2014 alone.

For the last 12 months matters have got much, much worse. The foreign desk—magnificent under the
leadership of David Munk and David Wastell—has been decimated. As all reporters are aware, no
newspaper can operate without skilled sub-editors. Half of these have been sacked, and the chief
sub, Richard Oliver, has left.

Solecisms, unthinkable until very recently, are now commonplace. Recently readers were introduced
to someone called the Duke of Wessex. Prince Edward is the Earl of Wessex. There was a front page
story about deer-hunting. It was actually about deer-stalking, a completely different activity.
Obviously the management don’t care about nice distinctions like this. But the readers do, and the
Telegraph took great care to get these things right until very recently.

The arrival of Mr Seiken coincided with the arrival of the click culture. Stories seemed no longer
judged by their importance, accuracy or appeal to those who actually bought the paper. The more
important measure appeared to be the number of online visits. On 22 September Telegraph online ran
a story about a woman with three breasts. One despairing executive told me that it was known this
was false even before the story was published. I have no doubt it was published in order to
generate online traffic, at which it may have succeeded. I am not saying that online traffic is
unimportant, but over the long term, however, such episodes inflict incalculable damage on the
reputation of the paper.

Open for business?

With the collapse in standards has come a most sinister development. It has long been axiomatic in
quality British journalism that the advertising department and editorial should be kept rigorously
apart. There is a great deal of evidence that, at the Telegraph, this distinction has collapsed.

Late last year I set to work on a story about the international banking giant HSBC. Well-known
British Muslims had received letters out of the blue from HSBC informing them that their accounts
had been closed. No reason was given, and it was made plain that there was no possibility of
appeal. "It’s like having your water cut off," one victim told me.

When I submitted it for publication on the Telegraph website, I was at first told there would be no
problem. When it was not published I made enquiries. I was fobbed off with excuses, then told there
was a legal problem. When I asked the legal department, the lawyers were unaware of any difficulty.
When I pushed the point, an executive took me aside and said that "there is a bit of an issue" with
HSBC. Eventually I gave up in despair and offered the article to openDemocracy. It can be read
here.

I researched the newspaper’s coverage of HSBC. I learnt that Harry Wilson, the admirable banking
correspondent of the Telegraph, had published an online story about HSBC based on a report from a
Hong Kong analyst who had claimed there was a ‘black hole’ in the HSBC accounts. This story was
swiftly removed from the Telegraph website, even though there were no legal problems. When I asked
HSBC whether the bank had complained about Wilson's article, or played any role in the decision to
remove it, the bank declined to comment. Mr Wilson’s contemporaneous tweets referring to the story
can be found here. The story itself, however, is no longer available on the website, as anybody
trying to follow through the link can discover. Mr Wilson rather bravely raised this issue publicly
at the ‘town hall meeting’ when Jason Seiken introduced himself to staff. He has since left the
paper.

Then, on 4 November 2014, a number of papers reported a blow to HSBC profits as the bank set aside
more than £1 billion for customer compensation and an investigation into the rigging of currency
markets. This story was the city splash in the Times, Guardian and Mail, making a page lead in the
Independent. I inspected the Telegraph coverage. It generated five paragraphs in total on page 5 of
the business section.

The reporting of HSBC is part of a wider problem. On 10 May last year the Telegraph ran a long
feature on Cunard’s Queen Mary II liner on the news review page. This episode looked to many like a
plug for an advertiser on a page normally dedicated to serious news analysis. I again checked and
certainly Telegraph competitors did not view Cunard’s liner as a major news story. Cunard is an
important Telegraph advertiser.

The paper’s comment on last year’s protests in Hong Kong was bizarre. One would have expected
theTelegraph of all papers to have taken a keen interest and adopted a robust position. Yet (in
sharp contrast to competitors like the Times)I could not find a single leader on the subject.

At the start of December the Financial Times, the Times and the Guardian all wrote powerful leaders
on the refusal by the Chinese government to allow a committee of British MPs into Hong Kong. The
Telegraph remained silent. I can think of few subjects which anger and concern Telegraph readers
more.

On 15 September the Telegraph published a commentary by the Chinese ambassador, just before the
lucrative China Watch supplement. The headline of the ambassador’s article was beyond parody:
‘Let’s not allow Hong Kong to come between us’. On 17 September there was a four-page fashion
pull-out in the middle of the news run, granted more coverage than the Scottish referendum. The
Tesco false accounting story on 23 September was covered only in the business section. By contrast
it was the splash, inside spread and leader in the Mail. Not that the Telegraph is short of Tesco
coverage. Tesco pledging £10m to fight cancer, an inside peak at Tesco’s £35m jet and ‘Meet the cat
that has lived in Tesco for 4 years’ were all deemed newsworthy.

There are other very troubling cases, many of them set out in Private Eye, which has been a major
source of information for Telegraph journalists wanting to understand what is happening on their
paper. There was no avoiding the impression that something had gone awry with the Telegraph’s news
judgment. At this point I wrote a long letter to Murdoch MacLennan setting out all my concerns
about the newspaper, and handing in my notice. I copied this letter to the Telegraph chairman,
Aidan Barclay.

I received a cursory response from Mr Barclay. He wrote that he hoped I could resolve my
differences with Murdoch MacLennan. I duly went to see the chief executive in mid-December. He was
civil, served me tea and asked me to take off my jacket. He said that I was a valued writer, and
said that he wanted me to stay.

I expressed all of my concerns about the direction of the paper. I told him that I was not leaving
to join another paper. I was resigning as a matter of conscience. Mr MacLennan agreed that
advertising was allowed to affect editorial, but was unapologetic, saying that “it was not as bad
as all that” and adding that there was a long history of this sort of thing at the Telegraph.

I have since consulted Charles Moore, the last editor of the Telegraph before the Barclays bought
the paper in 2004. Mr Moore confessed that the published accounts of Hollinger Inc, then the
holding company for the Telegraph, did not receive the scrutiny they deserved. But no newspaper in
history has ever given an unfavourable gloss on its owner’s accounts. Beyond that, Mr Moore told
me, there had been no advertising influence on the paper’s news coverage.

After my meeting with Mr MacLennan I received a letter from the Telegraph saying that the paper had
accepted my letter of resignation, but welcomed my offer to work out my six-month notice period.
However in mid January I was asked to meet a Telegraph executive, this time over tea at the Goring
Hotel. He told me that my weekly column would be discontinued and there had been a "parting of the
ways".

He stressed, however, that the Telegraph would continue to honour my contract until it ran out in
May. For my part I said that I would leave quietly. I had no desire to damage the newspaper. For
all its problems it continues to employ a large number of very fine writers. They have mortgages
and families. They are doing a fine job in very trying circumstances. I prepared myself mentally
for the alluring prospect of several months paid gardening leave.

Story, what story?

That was how matters stood when, on Monday of last week, BBC Panorama ran its story about HSBC and
its Swiss banking arm, alleging a wide-scale tax evasion scheme, while the Guardian and the
International Consortium of Investigative Journalists published their 'HSBC files'. All newspapers
realised at once that this was a major event. The FT splashed on it for two days in a row, while
the Times and the Mail gave it solid coverage spread over several pages.

You needed a microscope to find the Telegraph coverage: nothing on Monday, six slim paragraphs at
the bottom left of page two on Tuesday, seven paragraphs deep in the business pages on Wednesday.
The Telegraph’s reporting only looked up when the story turned into claims that there might be
questions about the tax affairs of people connected to the Labour party.

After a lot of agony I have come to the conclusion that I have a duty to make all this public.
There are two powerful reasons. The first concerns the future of the Telegraph under the Barclay
Brothers. It might sound a pompous thing to say, but I believe the newspaper is a significant part
of Britain’s civic architecture. It is the most important public voice of civilised, sceptical
conservatism.

Telegraph readers are intelligent, sensible, well-informed people. They buy the newspaper because
they feel that they can trust it. If advertising priorities are allowed to determine editorial
judgments, how can readers continue to feel this trust? The Telegraph’s recent coverage of HSBC
amounts to a form of fraud on its readers. 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. Imagine if the BBC—so often the object
of Telegraph attack—had conducted itself in this way. The Telegraph would have been contemptuous.
It would have insisted that heads should roll, and rightly so.

This brings me to a second and even more important point that bears not just on the fate of one
newspaper but on public life as a whole. A free press is essential to a healthy democracy. There is
a purpose to journalism, and it is not just to entertain. It is not to pander to political power,
big corporations and rich men. Newspapers have what amounts in the end to a constitutional duty to
tell their readers the truth.

It is not only the Telegraph that is at fault here. The past few years have seen the rise of
shadowy executives who determine what truths can and what truths can’t be conveyed across the
mainstream media. The criminality of News International newspapers during the phone hacking years
was a particularly grotesque example of this wholly malign phenomenon. All the newspaper groups,
bar the magnificent exception of the Guardian, maintained a culture of omerta around phone-hacking,
even if (like the Telegraph) they had not themselves been involved. One of the consequences of this
conspiracy of silence was the appointment of Andy Coulson, who has since been jailed and now faces
further charges of perjury, as director of communications in 10 Downing Street.

Urgent questions to answer

Last week I made another discovery. Three years ago the Telegraph investigations team—the same lot
who carried out the superb MPs’ expenses investigation—received a tip off about accounts held with
HSBC in Jersey. Essentially this investigation was similar to the Panorama investigation into the
Swiss banking arm of HSBC. After three months research the Telegraph resolved to publish. Six
articles on this subject can now be found online, between 8 and 15 November 2012, although three
are not available to view.

Thereafter no fresh reports appeared. Reporters were ordered to destroy all emails, reports and
documents related to the HSBC investigation. I have now learnt, in a remarkable departure from
normal practice, that at this stage lawyers for the Barclay brothers became closely involved. When
I asked the Telegraph why the Barclay brothers were involved, it declined to comment.

This was the pivotal moment. From the start of 2013 onwards stories critical of HSBC were
discouraged. HSBC suspended its advertising with the Telegraph. Its account, I have been told by an
extremely well informed insider, was extremely valuable. HSBC, as one former Telegraph executive
told me, is “the advertiser you literally cannot afford to offend”. HSBC today refused to comment
when I asked whether the bank's decision to stop advertising with the Telegraph was connected in
any way with the paper's investigation into the Jersey accounts.

Winning back the HSBC advertising account became an urgent priority. It was eventually restored
after approximately 12 months. Executives say that Murdoch MacLennan was determined not to allow
any criticism of the international bank. “He would express concern about headlines even on minor
stories,” says one former Telegraph journalist. “Anything that mentioned money-laundering was just
banned, even though the bank was on a final warning from the US authorities. This interference was
happening on an industrial scale.

“An editorial operation that is clearly influenced by advertising is classic appeasement. Once a
very powerful body know they can exert influence they know they can come back and threaten you. It
totally changes the relationship you have with them. You know that even if you are robust you won’t
be supported and will be undermined.”

When I sent detailed questions to the Telegraph this afternoon about its connections with
advertisers, the paper gave the following response. "Your questions are full of inaccuracies, and
we do not therefore intend to respond to them. More generally, 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."

The evidence suggests otherwise, and the consequences of the Telegraph’s recent soft coverage of
HSBC may have been profound. Would Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs have been much more energetic
in its own recent investigations into wide-scale tax avoidance, had the Telegraph continued to hold
HSBC to account after its 2012 investigation? There are great issues here. They go to the heart of
our democracy, and can no longer be ignored.