Whether or not Caesar’s wife is playing the field, it matters most how she is perceived. “Caesar’s wife must be above suspicion.” Not a bad maxim either for newspapers, particularly when dealing with issues where even a hint may arise of a commercial interest colouring coverage. Most newspapers boast an internal “Chinese wall” between commercial and editorial departments and their credibility depends on maintaining it diligently.
Not so however, it seems, in the Daily Telegraph whose former chief political commentator resigned last week in a flurry of publicity, alleging the paper had deliberately played down the HSBC Swiss Leaks story because it feared the bank would pull advertising, as it has with the Guardian since. The latter also revealed on Friday that the Telegraph's owners, the secretive Barclay brothers, had received a £250 million loan from the bank for a subsidiary shortly before, Oborne alleges, the paper's editorial attitude to HSBC -related stories changed.
The Telegraph wasn't having any of it. On Friday in a great harrumphing editorial that roundly denounced its critics, though, strangely, not mentioning Oborne, the paper insisted that "No subject, no story, no person and no organisation is off-limits to our journalists. They will follow the facts without fear or favour ...." Bravo! But , it added, defending its coverage, it had done so while maintaining "our editorial judgment and informed by our values. Foremost among them is a belief in free enterprise and free markets."
The campaign against HSBC was more about embarrassing the Tories, the paper insisted, than a real story worth telling its readers . In other words, instead of standing by that old journalistic saw about "letting the facts speak for themselves", the Telegraph, as they say in American football, decided to "run block" for HSBC in case criticism of it undermined readers' faith in capitalism.
Journalism or propaganda?