Peter Osborne resigns from the telegraph

[Justanotherlurker]

www.opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom/peter-oborne/why-i-have-resigned-from-telegraph


I think anyone who avidly reads the traditional news paper (and bbc) websites can see it's turning into click bait sensationalist rubbish and is shunning in depth investigative journalism. I admire him for sticking with his principals but isn't this a worrying issue, we used to proud ourselves with the freedom of press.

[LineRunner]

Don't know much about this journalist, but resignations on principle these days are unusual and brave.

[hiddenhome]

Oh dear, it sounds as though The Telegraph is going the way of the DM

[claig]

Great journalist, one of the best in the whole country. Independent, opinionated, not politically correct, thought-provoking, truth-telling, brilliant.

The Daily Mail is the place for him, nowhere else is worthy.

[LineRunner]

Has he been offered a job?

[Lunaballoon]

The Telegraph's lack of in depth coverage of the HSBC tax avoidance revelations was pretty shocking given the paper's excellent scoops on MPs expenses.

[WetAugust]

I stopped subscribing to the Telegraph many years ago. The articles were becoming sloppy and constantly regurgitated. Their stance on Europe also annoyed me as it used to be anti but us now more pro EU and pro Cameron.
I used to read the BBC website daily but it has shrunk it's news coverage and no longer has in depth analysis.
I find a Twitter is best for up to date news and provides links to global press sites and articles

[claig]

I have just read what Oborne wrote about why he resigned and it seems to me that some of it may be personal rather than just about principle.

He had already handed his notce in a while back and was working out his notice.

"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”."

order-order.com/2015/02/17/breaking-oborne-quits-telegraph/

Reading Oborne's praise of the old style Telegraph, you would think it was almost responsible for upholding democracy.

The Telegraph is an Establishment paper. There is lots it won't discuss. Years ago there was a huge Labour story and only the Daily Mail ran it front page, while the Sun and Telegraph gave it a much lower profile.

[claig]

Just heard Oborne on BBC Today programme on Radio 4.

Oh dear, he will not come out well out of this. I think he has gone a bit overboard.

Was a lot of fuss made over the HSBC Mexican drug money laundering at the time in the Telegraph?

You would be naive to think that the Telegraph is the defender of truth and democracy. Everyone knows that that is the Daily Mail!

[ThinkAboutItTomorrow]

To me the whole thing highlights why we need the BBC - they seem to have broken the story. Independence from advertising is essential to avoid media owners pandering to corporate advertisers and not reporting bad behaviour for risk of losing ad revenue.

[Isitmebut]

Re the BBC, I would suggest that they are as politically unbiased as the church, so not always the guardians of the facts/truth, especially as they could have influenced UK elections in the 2000’s by ‘saying what they see’.
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2354713/BBC-chief-admits-We-deep-liberal-bias-migrants--changed.html

www.thecommentator.com/article/1953/exclusive_bbc_left_wing_political_bias_illustrated_through_uk_political_funding_revelations

Re Oborne, over the years I have found his articles very in depth/informative, and I’m not surprised he has thrown a wobbler on a point of principal, on which and in essence he is probably right, re the threat of withdrawing advertising revenue from the Telegraph, the newspaper space was reporting the HSBC whistleblowing was relatively small to other news papers.

However, playing the devils advocate, it was as clear in the first few days as it is now, WE DO NOT KNOW ALL THE FACTS, as a BBC reporter gleaned from the blower of whistles, ‘there is a million bits of data yet to come’.

If you listened to the early hysteria, just having a Swiss Bank account is a crime, when this is clearly not the case; neither is using legal tax avoidance measures.

So while it is now clear HSBC’s Swiss Private Client bank HAS provided illegal tax avoidance services, with accusations of wholesale money laundering to criminals now emerging, the MAIN story once that rather general fact was known, is WHO has done the tax nasties, not the potentially libellous accusations that all those named WITH a HSBC Swiss bank account, are criminals.

To me a key component of this story is, as trying to ever prove tax evasion and getting a solid case to prosecute is as solid as rocking horse pooh, is why HMRC did nothing about the incriminating files he passed them in 2008, despite his email and telephone contact to HMRC soon after, seeking clarification that they would act?

[ThinkAboutItTomorrow]

Agree with you on HMRC. The cuts to their funding have so damaged their ability to do anything about tax evasion that it makes a mockery of any government claims to care one jot about stopping it.
They have lost 15% of their budget since 2010 and in 10 years headcount has dropped by 1/3rd.
At the top the governance is overseen by former tax consultants from Delloitte and PWC - hardly cutting edge supporters of a strong HMRC.

[Isitmebut]

I will take your word for it that HMRC budgets have been cut as part of a slimmer government campaign to cut the deficit, but in the case of illegal or other tax avoidance, this could be a good advert of getting more bang for the taxpayer £1, for less cost.

May 2014: “HMRC crackdown yields record £23.9bn in additional tax”
www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-27576626

”The government has raised a record £23.9bn in additional tax for the year to the end of March as a result of a crackdown on tax avoidance.”

I get amused when politicians who who know better say 'only one person has been prosecuted' for two reasons.

Firstly all the facts are only now being known, there is no statute of limitations over a decade, and isn't the tax collectors MO to save time/effort, that once finding a hive of evasion to go after ONE in a blaze of publicity, and the rest find a new moral religion, well they CONFESS their tax evasion sins at least, to try limit fines etc?

[limitedperiodonly]

Yawn.

I read to the second paragraph and then gave up when he praised Peter Utley.

I'm too young to remember him, but his son, Tom Utley, is a journeyman who worked at the Telegraph and has shuffled into a well-remunerated berth at the Daily Mail writing a mix of political bollocks and whimsical family stuff.

I imagine that is to be the well-funded fate of Peter Oborne who I guess was shunted out of the Telegraph in a raft of clear-outs of dead wood rather than a purge of political heavyweights.

I liked Simon Heffer when he was at the Telegraph but since he went to the Mail and became too important to be edited he's really gone downhill.

[EssexMummy123]

It made me think though - the whole advertorial thing, politicians getting 'backed' by certain papers - doesn't that compromise reporting?

[IPityThePontipines]

His piece echoes what Private Eye has been saying for months.

It would be good to have more transparency with regards to media funding. Many papers are fond of having sponsored supplements paid for by some rather dodgy people/companies.

Though we generally don't have the same politics, Peter Osborne has always struck me as being his own man, so I respect him for that.

[MollyAir]

I think he's after the Guardian job.

[lemonmuffin1]

I think Tom Utley is Peter Utleys father, not son

[limitedperiodonly]

Apologies. T.P. Utley is the original Spawnicator.

He begat the bore of little brain Tom Utley who went from the Telegraph/Spectator to The Daily Mail.

I didn't realise another Utley dolt had infiltrated the media but in hindsight, I should have known.

There are another three of them for us to dread.

With any luck, they won't foist their trite opinions on us in the media but will merely fuck up our lives with their idiocy in politics or the City

[Seeker33]

Brave ove by Peter Oborne. I will be interested to know how is career progresses. ( was suprised he did not resign coupled with a book release.) That would have got everything on the record.

[sourdrawers]

EssexMummy123 All newspapers are essentially profit-seeking businesses controlled by a small elite group, and dependent on corporate advertisers.

In the Guardian a couple of months ago, there was an article (a few column inches) about melting Polar ice caps in Siberia and the man made pollutants that are accelerating the problem. Very alarming stuff! The opposite page was a full page ad' for the latest 44 gas guzzling, tank. It isn't really the case that journalists are compromised or dictated to, by their owners / bosses. They simply know how to fit in within the system they find themselves in. They know what they can and can't mention. It's understood. This is the reality of journalism and we get a vision of the world in which corporate domination is viewed as 'just how things are'. Occasionally someone like Oborne steps out from beneath this umbrella and get branded by fellow reporters as a maverick*, which implies a kind of well meaning oddball, ultimately naive and romantic and deluded.